The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Eve of the Feast of the Nativity
December 24, 2019
One of the great joys of the Christmases of my childhood was riding in the backseat of the station wagon with my family to look at Christmas lights in the neighborhoods of our town. We’d drive miles to see a light display--and there were some spectacular ones. One of my favorites was Miss Betty Humphrey’s house. Miss Betty was the tax commissioner, and she lived nearby in an inconspicuous ranch home with a big front yard. Every Christmas she’d put together a light show that had cars lined around the block. Each year we’d ride by to see what Miss Betty had put out for Christmas decorations. Our childhood delight was never disappointed at Miss Betty’s.
There were lights all over her house, twinkling along the eves and around the doors and window frames. The shrubbery were covered in colored lights and there were yard signs that gleamed “Noel!” and “Merry Christmas!” There was not one but two lighted nativity scenes--with Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus in a manger lit up from within, glowing with the optimistic promise of electric Christmastide. One year there was a camel. And always, alongside the figures at the manger, somehow Frosty the Snowman and Santa Claus crept in as well.
It was a delightful spectacle to behold--and my joy and anticipation approaching Miss Betty’s, waiting our turn in the long line of cars snaking around the block, was matched only closely by the disappointment at how quickly the scenes moved by--and how far away they soon were in the back widow of the station wagon.
The electric glow of Christmas promise faded as we pulled away--and as we went in search of other, lesser, light displays.
I am grateful for Miss Betty and her gift to the community--the joy and hope that she displayed in the extravagant decorations she brought to her front yard each year. My heart is still warmed, and I get that soft fuzzy feeling when I think about it.
I have a warm feeling about our own crèche at the font, at the back of the church--the grotto-like shelter, the stable with manager and animals, the little dog, the holy family, and the shepherds and their sheep--and the little infant Jesus in the manger.
It’s a feeling that I always associate with the angels--their song of “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
Miss Betty’s crèche scene however, and indeed our own, didn’t have any angels. Maybe they’re too hard to re-create--maybe they don’t lend themselves to polystyrene molding and internal illumination. Maybe they’re too beautiful and awesome to form into something so earth-bound. But they weren’t there. And so I’ve been thinking about angels this past week. And about that association, that feeling, of “peace on earth” that I’ve had with them for all these years--that warm soft glow we may feel at Christmastide.
Last Sunday I assisted in Sunday School as Angela Shelley taught, and we told the story of the angel Gabriel’s visit to Joseph--just as Gabriel had visited Mary--God’s messenger telling Mary and Joseph about the child that was to be born, the very Son of God. Angela reminded the children of something Mother Kathryn has taught them--that whenever angels show up, they begin their heralding, their announcement, with a reassurance:
Fear not.
Gabriel said it to Mary. Gabriel said it to Joseph. The angel of the Lord--probably Gabriel again--says it to the shepherds out in the fields with their sheep. Fear not! For behold, I bring you tidings of great joy!
Why is Gabriel so concerned with fear? Is it that an angel is terrible and awesome to behold? That’s certainly likely. I suspect angels are far more fierce and terrifying than the soft things we pin to our Christmas trees and send in our greeting cards--the Hallmark imaginings of Christmas joy and peace.
But I also suspect that something quite different is going on. What if the angel knows that the shepherds--that Mary--that Joseph--that you and I--are already afraid?
What if the experience of fear is not related to the appearance of the angel--after all, an angel has no will of its own; it is only a messenger, doing the will of God. What if the experience of fear is instead about the knowledge of evil in the world?
In the story from our beginning, the scriptures of the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and, armed with this knowledge, suddenly know shame. They are cast out of the garden. Do they feel fear?
Certainly the shepherds knew a hard life. On the margins of society, living rough with the sheep, they inhabited the open spaces, protecting their sheep--sources of wool and of food. They would have been poor at best in a land occupied and controlled by the wealthy.
Augustus, away in Rome, has called for all the world to be taxed--all the known world--and so Joseph, a carpenter, a laborer, takes his pregnant fiancée, up to Bethlehem. There’s not even room there for a place to stay, and so they end up with the animals. Joseph was afraid--what would people say? Mary was pregnant and they weren’t even married yet! Mary was afraid--she was a young pregnant girl who couldn’t even explain rationally how things had gotten to this state. A visit from an angel? A child who was to be born because it was the will of God? She had been caught up in the action of God’s own Holy Spirit, at work in her life--unpredictably, astonishingly, amazingly. And fearfully.
The Jewish world, all of Palestine, was full of fear. People on the edges of the empire, taxed by the Roman government far away, their land occupied, their temple within mere decades destroyed. To hear the historian Josephus tell it, the streets of Jerusalem ran with blood around the time of the fall of the Temple--even with Josephus’s characteristic exaggeration, things were not good. There was division, strife, turmoil in the land. People were afraid.
And aren’t we, too, living in an age of fear? Of division? In a time of wealth and prosperity the likes of which have never been known before, the fabric of our society is still torn by fear. One part of our land is certain we’re encountering a constitutional crisis in our government; another is certain that things have never been better with our government--and we are afraid to talk to one another. Our family members, children, loved ones, maybe even our selves suffer in the grips of addiction--or struggle under the loss of employment. Men and women are homeless and hungry in our streets, or groaning under the weight of engines of mass production. Our young children, not unlike the Holy Innocents of Jerusalem, are victims of gun violence. Are we not afraid?
Oh that an angel would come down and proclaim, “Fear not! For behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people!”
And that, friends, is exactly what happened. Two thousand years ago in Bethlehem, into a world as broken and sinful as our own, in a time as precarious and treacherous as our own.
An angel came down--to proclaim the truth from above--that God’s love was made flesh and dwells among us.
That God, God’s own very self, has come into this world--not in the soft electric glow of manufactured candlelight--but in the agony and bloody sweat of struggle and despair.
That God’s own Son has come among us--to bring hope, transformation, and healing.
That God is reconciling all things to God’s own good purposes--to God’s own self.
That’s why the angel brings this message--Fear not.
That’s why Jesus says the same thing -- over and over again to his disciples. The thing we hear over and over again in scripture. Fear not!
The peace and joy we feel in our hearts this Christmas season is real, but it’s not because of the light up figures, or the kindness of strangers, or the gifts we’ve given one another--though those things can be signs that point to peace and goodwill. That warm feeling of joy is not just because of the song of the angels, though they point to its source.
That feeling, friends, is hope. In the midst of a sinful and broken world, hope is breaking forth in us--the hope that not only has God come among us, Emmanuel, but that God is among us even now--in the rocky places, in the grief, in the fear--and that at the manger, and at the cross, we find that God sees us in our sin, in our brokenness, that God sees the sin and evil that breaks our hearts--just as it breaks the very heart of God.
Fear not, the angel says.
Fear not, our Lord says.
God is here. God sees and loves you. And God is with you, even until the end of the age, Jesus says.
That’s the work of the Incarnation--that God comes among us and will not let us go.
Tonight, as you feel the warm glow of the candles, the goodwill and peace of Christ that fill the room, as you experience the presence of Christ in the crèche and in the sacrament of the altar, as you meet Christ in this place and in the loving faces of one another, hold onto that feeling--not as a once-a-year occurrence, but as the reality that perhaps on the other days of the year we have failed to see.
And if you feel despair tonight, or loneliness, anxiety, or desperation, hold fast and know that God is there with you. Emmanuel has come among us and is here. The things that break your heart are the things that break the very heart of God--but God cannot be broken. Not even death can conquer the love that is God--the love that God has for you.
The shepherds heard the song of the angels--Fear not! Glory to God! Peace! And they ran to Bethlehem to meet this infant, this savior of the world, this babe, this Hope made flesh.
That’s why we went back each year to Miss Betty’s yard to see her Christmas lights. It was about more than just the good feeling. It was a promise, at least once a year, that all those cars, streaming around the block, were in it together. We were looking for hope.
And that’s why we’ve come here tonight. To hear again the message of the angels. To see for ourselves that God is faithful. That God is real. That love conquers all things.
Peering out the back of the station wagon, looking up, necks craned back, to see the angels in the night sky, or gazing at this altar--at one another--we are all looking for hope.
And here it is, right in the manger, right at this altar, right in our very hearts.
The Word is made flesh. God’s love has come among us.
Fear not.
Come and adore him.
And take that message of hope from this place out into the world.
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