“Why Christmas Matters in 2010.”[1]

 INTRODUCTION: In the Wall Street Journal Saturday, there was an article addressing the number of genes in ours and other species. It stated that when the initial effort to sequence genes began back in the 1990s, the scientific assumption was that different species would have many different genes. Homo sapiens would most certainly be much different than the lower animals.

The big surprise was not only that human beings have almost the exact number of genes as a rabbit and other animals, but we have the same genes, give or take a handful. In fact, out of 22,568 genes, there are no more than 18 wholly unique genes. That means that the evolutionary process used mostly the same 22,550 genes to make a mouse or a rhinoceros as it did to make a human. The difference was that the genes were arranged in a different order.

The article then gives a comparison to Shakespeare that helps a lot. It notes that Shakespeare used approximately 18,000 words to write each of his plays. He used the same words for each play, but he arranged them in a different order. Few of the words were unique; most were the same ones used in other writing, but again it was the use and arrangement of them that made the difference. That meant that the words used in Tolstoy’s War and Peace or Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason, were almost the same words as Shakespeare’s, only they were arranged differently.

            The late Kurt Vonnegut put a little different spin on that process, when he said that, “A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks.” (He didn’t like semi-colons.) Just the 26 phonetic symbols of the alphabet – a, e, i, o, u… and others such as m, n, r, s, t…etc – are necessary to write a Shakespearean play or a book by Dostoevsky or a speech or sermon.

It’s the same principle. It’s all in the arrangement – whether words or genes. Communication can be uplifting and inspiring, or depressing and discouraging – all according to how the 26 symbols of the alphabet are arranged.

SCRIPTURE.

So with that in mind, listen to the words of scripture recount the Christmas story. Or we could say, listen how the phonetic symbols are arranged. And rather than reading only from Christian scripture, I will start with the Qur’an, and the beautiful Sura 3, verses 45-47:

Behold! the angels said: "O Mary! God gives you glad tidings of a Word from him: his name will be Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, held in honor in this world and the hereafter and [among] those nearest to God: He shall speak to the people in childhood and in maturity. And he shall be [among] the righteous."

She said: "O my Lord! How shall I have a son when no man has touched me?" He said: "Even so: God creates what he wills: When he has decreed a plan, he but says to it, 'Be,' and it is!”

The Christian Gospel of Luke carries the story further:

So Joseph went up unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem…To be taxed with Mary to whom he was engaged and who was great with child.
            And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.
 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

Now of course we know, whether it’s the holy Qur’an or the holy Bible, the story they have told has provided hope and inspiration to billions around the world through the ages. But the question we’ve posed for today is, “Does Christmas really matter in 2010?...” for people like us, who aren’t necessarily Christian, but are sort of whatever you get when you mix Christians, with Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, or Buddhist, and add in Humanists, then pick and choose which parts you like…the whatevers.

And a minister, who, in addition to reading the Bible and the Qur’an in preparation for this sermon, also read the Journal, the News-Press, and the New York Times, plus the New Yorker and Sojourners. Based on my reading I would say that Christmas really matters in 2010. Why?

I. BECAUSE OUR WORDS OF HOPE HAVE BEEN LOST.

The ship of state is in difficult waters. Karl Marx predicted that capitalism would collapse in on itself because of greed. The wealthiest would work the system to get the most and give back the least to the poorest. And when the government cooperated to make that happen, the fall would come. That almost happened starting two years ago with the Great Recession, and we’re not out of the woods yet.

In 2008, when the economy began to falter, emergency measures were enacted that rescued the financial system at the expense of the taxpayer. Did the wealthiest of American capitalists, the Wall Street Bankers, look at this as an opportunity to return something to the American people? No, they returned to the way they had always done business – unfettered greed and total disregard to what that greed was doing to our nation.

I know people in this congregation who were almost hounded by financial corporations to take out so-called equity loans on their overpriced homes. When the economy corrected, it was the loan holders who were blamed. And in Ft. Myers, the courts cooperated by creating a “rocket docket” to handle the nation’s leading number of homes in foreclosure. An attorney present at some of those proceedings told me it was disgraceful the lack of process for those foreclosed on.

Our system is sick. And the poorest of the poor are suffering the most. The issue is whether we can see ourselves as not only celebrating in a service of worship, but also thinking of ourselves in the role of community organizers, working for the rights of the poor to have a place at the table.

            I read recently an excerpt from the book, Blessed are the organized,[2] about A. Phillip Randolph, who was head of the Pullman’s union in the days when trains were an essential component of national travel. He was also a civil rights activist fighting for African American rights, long before the modern civil rights movement which probably had its start in the 1950s. Jeffrey Stout, the author relates a conversation Randolph had with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt reportedly urged Randolph “to go out and make him do what was necessary to bring racial segregation to an end.”

That’s another way of saying that Roosevelt recognized the immense power of local organizations striving to bring about change. He needed their help to make a huge social change in our nation.

            We have to change the arrangement…to arrange the phonetic symbols differently. So that we’re willing to risk for good. That means to reclaim hope, despite the bleak picture before us.

II. HOPE DURING BIBLICAL TIMES.

The early Christian writers, in their first 300 years, were facing bitter persecution in nearly every venue. They were seen as threats to the Roman Empire and enemies of the state. They were used in the coliseum of Rome as entertainment, to fight lions barehanded and to die for the entertainment of citizens.

            In the midst of that bitter persecution, they wrote the Christian scriptures we read today. They rearranged the symbols to promote faith, hope and love. They pressed forward toward the future with nothing more than faith in the veracity of their claims. Words such as these:

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Gotthold Lessing, one of the noteworthy, 18^th century, German philosophers of the Enlightenment, once wrote: “If God were to hold all Truth concealed in his right hand, and to hold in his left hand the steady, diligent search for Truth, but with the proviso of always and forever erring in the process: If God offered me the choice – between certainty and searching, I would with all humility always take the left Hand…the searching…the erring.”

That’s our choice: The Mystery of our existence is just that…a Mystery to be addressed, not a problem to be solved. We address that Mystery in song, in reading, in prayer and meditation. And the language of our address is poetic, sometimes very beautiful, sometimes very plain, but all of it always open to interpretation.

CONCLUSION.

Many years ago, while living in Norman, Oklahoma, on a cold Christmas Eve morning, I bit down on some cereal and broke a tooth. I had just moved to Norman and had not yet found a dentist. So I called a dentist friend in Kingfisher, a town some 60 miles away. His office was closed of course, but he agreed to go in, and put on a temporary cap.

Afterwards, instead of returning home, I decided to drive over to the Golden Age Nursing Home in Guthrie, Oklahoma, where my mother was residing. I had told her I wouldn’t be up to see her until Christmas Day. But now, since I was so close, I was confident it would be a neat surprise to pop in on her unexpectedly on Christmas Eve.

When I walked in to her room, I was stunned to find her lying with her arms tied to the sides of her bed. She began to cry as I untied her. Mother had suffered a stroke several years earlier that had paralyzed the right side of her body, leaving her with severe “aphasia.” That meant that on rare occasions she could say what she wanted, but most times, it was pure gibberish.[3]

After I had been there awhile, she indicated that she wanted me to play the Cassio keyboard that we children had bought her. Mother had started playing a pump organ at their Methodist Episcopal Church South, when only 12 years of age, and had continued to play the piano until the time of her stroke.

Now though, she wanted me to play, and for us to sing Christmas carols. So as the snow fell outside her window, I chorded on the keyboard and Mother and I sang the songs of Christmas. Of course, she could no longer carry a tune, nor say any of the right words. But to my memory it was some of the most beautiful Christmas music I had ever heard.

We had just finished singing Joy to the World when Mother said the only understandable and articulate words of my entire visit. As clear as a bell, she said, “Oh, son. God’s so good to us!”

I was stunned. Only a half-hour ago, she had been tied like a dog to the bed. Now she was proclaiming how good God is.

I wanted to say, “Why, Mother! You can’t walk. You can’t talk. You can’t even go to the bathroom by yourself. Dad’s gone, you don’t have a house or car anymore, and you’re lying here on this little half-bed, unable to read or even to watch television. How can you possibly say, ‘Oh, son! God’s so good to us?’”

But instead, I put my arms around her and hugged her, and told her I loved her and that she was a wonderful mother.

Later, as I drove back home, I reflected on what I had just witnessed, in relation to my own life. I was going to be alone on Christmas Eve for the very first time in my life. My children were all going to be with their mother. In fact, it seemed like everyone I cared for, had other plans, none of which included me. As a result, I was committed to having a giant-sized pity party, for poor, pitiful Wayne.

But as I drove back to Norman in the snow that had begun to accumulate, I realized that I had just witnessed the wonder of the Universe, which is this:

Each of us, no matter who we are, has the capacity to look the most daunting obstacle in the eye, face the bleakest horizon possible, and utter our own words of faith, our own good tidings of great joy, or as Mother had said, how good God is.

That’s what we mean by hope! 2,000 years ago, the followers of Jesus had no clue where Jesus was born or when. They knew he was grindingly poor, and that poor people sometimes had babies in the strangest of places. But they refused to accept that his birth, or his life were inconsequential. To a dark and dank manger filled with dung, they added adoring shepherds, and to the shepherds, an angelic chorus, and to the chorus, an Ode to Joy.

That birth says to us that in the face of life’s most distressing events, we too can have a song in our soul and hope in our heart. We too can sing a hymn of faith at Christmas time.

Shalom. Salaam Aleikum. Amen. And Blessed Be.