Luke 2:8-20
This
has been a beautiful work of the people.
Young
and old and middlers,
Coming
together to sing, to share, to contribute to the common experience.
I’m
tempted to say that we need more events like this,
but that just turns my
gratitude into restless discontent.
I’m
grateful for what people have done to make this happen.
And
it makes me reflect upon what it means to be in community together.
What
are communities for?
And
I think one thing communities are for
is
keeping time.
and
not just saints days, birthdays and anniversaries,
days
which remember a person or event in the past.
But
occasions in the present when we realize our common humanity
and
share the space and time in mourning, in laughing, in wonder,
we
realize and create community at funerals,
at
weddings.
And
births.
And
not just special days. Even the ordinary
days.
People
in community ask each other questions like,
“how
was your week”
Or
when Alice comes across the Mad-hatter, the March Hare, and the dormouse having
a party and singing, “A very merry unbirthday, to you”
And
she realizes that it is actually her
unbirthday too – and so she joins the party.
When
we share time together we give time meaning
and
we receive the meaning that the time gives.
Meaning
is the gift that present experience gives to our memories in the future.
What
sharing time with others helps us do
is
slow down and become aware.
Inevitably,
as meaningful as community can be in our memories,
In
the present, sharing time together with friends, neighbors, and strangers,
it
can oftentimes be a very awkward thing – sometimes perhaps painful.
We
look around and see other people with looks on their faces that may be excited or weary, anxious or calm
As
our minds weave in and out of being present to the experience of togetherness
and thinking about the ridiculous demands of work
and
Christmas expectations of culture and extended families,
to-do
lists which occupy a corner of our minds like a dripping faucet.
But
if we are to believe the message of the Christmas story,
it’s
in the midst of our distractions, our awkwardness, our pain, our insecurities,
that God comes among us as love.
Where
two or three are gathered, Christ says, I am there among them.
he
could have added: whether you’re aware of it or not.
What’s
profound about community is the way
that
just by being together we create meaning and memories.
And
one of the most significant memories we may carry away
is
the plain fact that other people have laughed with us.
Other
people have sung with us.
Other
people have prayed and felt pain with
us.
We
keep time by singing songs, slowing down words that could be said in one
fraction of the time. We join our tones
and pitches, we awkwardly try to keep the same rhythms as each other.
Isn’t
so much of community a clumsy attempt at cooperation?
But
this for me is what is so beautiful.
Because
there is so much grace in the willingness to come together
and
be imperfect alongside one another
and
then to make the most outrageous sounding claim
that
in all of this awkwardness and clumsy attempts at cooperation,
in
all of our misunderstood, half-heard, distracted, participation – God is in our
midst.
This
is one of the things that I think it means that the Christmas story
takes
place in a stable and not an inn.
It
was not a well orchestrated,
well
planned,
anxiously
managed production.
The
gathering place was a barn.
The
gathered community was a carpenter, a mother and her newborn,
shepherds
and some livestock.
And
who knows how awkward it was for these strangers to come up to the manger,
and
Joseph half awake, startled,
jumping
up suspiciously and wanting to know
just
exactly what these farmers think they’re doing coming in.
And
then their story – quite literally unbelievable.
And
we don’t get the dialogue around the manger.
But I doubt it was a Hollywood script.
There
may well have been awkward silences.
There
probably were awkward smiles –
hoping
to communicate good will over the wide distance of not knowing each other.
And
perhaps they told stories and sang songs.
I think they must have stayed a good while.
And
maybe Joseph sat there tapping his foot – or maybe he went on a walk.
Or
maybe he was quietly content, I don’t know.
But
the scriptures tell us that “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them
in her heart.”
Because
here was a gathered community
that
for a time shared a moment,
And
in that shared time all of them were able to for a brief moment allow the fog
of worries and of insecurities and regrets and frustrations – to slowly
dissolve.
And
they experienced each other as human beings sharing a very human experience,
and
looking at Jesus, the baby that awakens their spirits to the gift of life,
and
to the grace of God,
Grace
is the delight of God in who we are as those God has made.
As
children of our heavenly father.
The
delight of God in the flourishing of life,
and
the longing of God with us and for us, to be able to realize again the fullness
of being God’s creation.
Grace
is the love that God has for us
Not
in spite of but because of and in the midst of all of our awkwardness and
imperfections.
“For
where two or three are gathered together in my name, there God is in the midst
of them.”
The
gathered shepherds, carpenter, mother, child, sheep, donkey, and so on,
Sharing
in a moment of realization that God’s love is realer than the games of human
society. And in that enduring love, for
a moment they rest.
And
a realization once again together, of peace, of joy, of renewed hope.
As
the angel’s song stuck in their head, “Glory to God in the highest, and on
earth peace, good will toward all.”
Amen.
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