Isaiah 9:2-7
David A. Davis
December 24, 2015
Christmas Eve
Somewhere tonight a family has arrived from three states over. They have come to spend Christmas with their dad and grandfather, who has been struggling after he fell and broke his hip just before Thanksgiving. Truth is, grandpa has been struggling since grandma died three years ago. After the car is unpacked and everyone settles into the living room and Grandpa ask the expected question “How was the trip.” Then Grandpa says, “You shouldn’t have come so far. You should be at your house for Christmas.” Theresa, the nine-year-old, the youngest of the grandchildren, goes over and carefully joins Grandpa in his favorite chair. At nine Theresa is just learning that giving at Christmas can be as fun as receiving. She looks up and says to her grandfather, “No Grandpa, we’re here for you.”
Somewhere tonight a mom is giving the necklace her mother gave her to her daughter who is pregnant with her first child. As mother and daughter share the tears, the mother says, “When I was pregnant with you my mother gave me this necklace. Her mother gave it her when she was pregnant with me. It comes from your great-grandmother. It’s not the gift that keeps on giving. It’s the gift we keep giving and it’s for you.”
Somewhere tonight a father is having that conversation with his future son-in-law. The young man invites the older man out to the patio for some private time. It was not an unexpected conversation but both men were nervous. “I would like to ask Lindsay to marry me and I would like to ask your blessing.” The dad offers a bear hug and a congratulatory slap on the back and quickly offers an affirming response. But then with both hands on the man’s shoulders and with a serious tone, the father says, “But I need you to know one thing, I am on Lindsay’s team and I will always be on her team. So there will never be a question; I am for her and the last thing I will say to her before we walk down the aisle will be, ‘I am for you.’”
Somewhere tonight a pastor is telling the story of the birth of Jesus from Luke’s Gospel. She invites all the children to come up and sit around the front of the sanctuary like she does and they do every Sunday morning. She brought a rocking chair to the chancel that afternoon and envisioned sitting in it with all the children gathered around like little angels listening to her tell of Mary and the shepherds and the angels. That’s how you know this is her first Christmas after being ordained and the rookie mistake she makes is that children on Christmas Eve really can’t sit and listen quietly no matter how hard they try. She pretty much lost them at hello. Those 17 kids felt like 50 on the floor around here. She hadn’t even come to “in that region there were shepherds living in the fields” when she could tell there was about to be a great Christmas uprising at her feet.
So in an act of desperation, as she keeps telling the story, she gets up and walks down the aisle to a dad who is holding a baby just a few months old. The pastor and the dad communicate without talking and she takes the child and walks back amid the children gathered around. It was the family’s third child or the father never would have done that. With a baby there in the pastor’s arms, a sudden calm came on the chancel steps. “And the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for behold, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.’” As she stood there with that child, the pastor had those kids, and the whole congregation for that matter, in the palm of her hand.
In a moment of pastoral/theological-Holy Spirit-inspired genius, the pastor goes off script, off Luke’s script. And as she says, “this will be sign for you,” she says it 17 times. The “for you” part. Looking each child right in the eyes and moving toward them as she can. “For you and for you and for you.” Justin, who is four years old, makes it a Christmas Eve for the ages. He was the 17th child over on the side and just as the pastor works her way to him and leans over, extends her arms just a bit, and says “for you,” Justin stands up, backs away and with a highly detectable incredulous tone, says, “For me? Really? I’m 4 years old. I can’t take care of a baby!”
Eventually order is restored. The story is finished. The service ends with “Silent Night.” At the church door, an older saint of the church gives the still flustered young pastor a knowing look and a pat on the shoulder and leans in and says to her, “It’s what we all say, isn’t it?” The pastor’s look indicates a need for clarity. “It’s what we all say to God’s promise at some point in our lives. For me? Really God? For me? For us?”
For a child has been born… for us
A son given… to us
For… to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord.
This will be a sign… for you, and you, and you, and you.
For us? For you? For me? Really? In writing about Jesus, Dietrich Bonhoeffer argues that that the Christ can only be understood as the Christ who is for me, for us. He is not first a Christ for himself. His being for me is not just an effect that emanates from him like generosity or hospitality. It is who he is. It’s not an accident that Christ is for me, for us. It is at the core of his very being. It is who this Jesus is. He is for us. He stands for us. For you. Immanuel. God with us. Here for you. This gift that God keeps giving and it is for you. It is the first thing Jesus says to us and the last thing he says to us. The Alpha and Omega of his teaching. I am for you always. This child forever wrapped in swaddling clothes, is for you. The sign from God that says “I Am… for you.”
I have been reading the book The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown. It is a beautifully written and compelling story of the 1938 Olympic gold medal winning crew team from the University of Washington. In the preface to the book the author writes about his visit to see one of the rowers, well into his old age, who was dying. As they visited and the man reminisced about life, it wasn’t until he started talking about his rowing career that he began to cry. He got choked up as he talked about “the boat.” The author tells of how he wasn’t sure whether the reference to “the boat” was about the shell or the men in the boat. But it was “the boat” that brought the tears. “I realized,” he writes, “that the boat was something more than just the shell or its crew… it encompassed but transcended both — it was something mysterious and almost beyond definition. It was a shared experience… he was crying, at least in part, for the loss of that vanished moment but much more, I think, for the sheer beauty of it.”
Somewhere tonight a congregation is starting to light candles and sing “Silent Night.” A family is sitting together in the pew, three generations together again in a pew that the grandparents have occupied for 65 years. The grandfather, who always sits on the end of the pew, starts to get weepy. Not just teary, but weepy. With his shoulders heaving a bit as he tries to sing. His tears are glistening in the candlelight. In the middle of the pew is the fifteen-year-old grandson, who leans over and looks over and sees his grandfather barely keeping it together. With genuine concern he leans over and asks his father in one of those church whispers, “What’s wrong with grandpop? Why’s he crying?” “Grandpa always cries at ‘Silent Night.’ Every year I can remember, since I was way younger than you, Grandpa cries during ‘Silent Night.’” It wasn’t quite like the son was tired of his father’s Christmas Eve tears, but it did have sort of a “that’s just grandpa” tone to it.
It is later at night now, when for a moment it’s just grandfather and grandson sitting in front of the Christmas tree while everyone else is in the kitchen. The teenager wasn’t satisfied with his father’s answer so this time he asks his grandfather. “Grandpa, why do you cry every year during ‘Silent Night?’” Grandpa seems surprised anybody noticed when in fact, the whole congregation notices every year. “Is it cause you like the song? Or is it the candles being pretty? Or the family being all together?”
Grandpa is quiet at first. Then he smiles and heaves a bit of sigh. “You know, no one has ever asked me before, including your grandmother. But I have thought about it a lot. I’ve had many years to think about it since I can’t seemed to stop the tears on Christmas Eve. It’s more than just the song, though I do like it. It’s not just the candlelight. And I can’t tell you what it means to me to have the family all together like that. But it’s more than all of that. It’s kind of beyond words, the beauty of it all.” Grand stops and tilts his head and sort of looks up at nothing in particular and without looking back at his grandson, he goes on. “The beauty of it all, the experience of it all, and that baby too, to think of that baby.” And he catches himself getting teary and says to his grandson with a chuckle, “Jesus I mean, the baby Jesus.” “Yeah, Grandpa, I figured that part!”
“Well, I know it’s sounds kind of weird, but it’s like every Christmas Eve, right in that moment, God is telling me how much God loves me. That Jesus loves me. This Jesus loves me. And I never get tired of hearing it. God sending that baby just for me.”
Somewhere tonight… for me? Really?
Yes, really… for you and you and you and you and you.
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