In his Christmas message, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe said that Christmas doesn’t really begin for him until he hears “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…” and as I prepared for this morning by reading over the lessons I understood, I think for the first time, what the Presiding Bishop is referring to. The joy of Christmas does not come from the virgin birth, from shepherds in their fields, from kings following a star, or from angels singing with the heavenly hosts. It isn’t about the beautiful decorations or the gorgeous music, it isn’t about the happiness of seeing and being with family, or watching our children open gifts from Santa. All of these wonderful things are byproducts of the fact that God lives among us.
I know that many people get discouraged by the dwindling number of people who attend church on a regular basis. The truth is that the institutional church is in decline. Every metric by which we measure the health of the church shows us that fact. Some have predicted that the church will disappear within decades and maybe it will; but before we get too far ahead of ourselves and begin thinking about how St. John’s will be the exception or all the ways we can get more butts in seats, let’s take a minute to think about a few things.
On Christmas eve we hosted 341 people, many of whom were visitors. Some of us might be thinking: “Well if they can come on Christmas Eve, why can’t they come every week?” but that is the kind of thinking that’s killing the church because that kind of thinking is about us and what we want, not about what the church actually is. As many of us know, the church is comprised of the people of God, as in all of the people of God, not just those who participate on Sunday morning. The church includes all 341 people who sat in this room on Christmas eve as well as the many people who didn’t; it includes the people who are fed from our kitchen; the people who use the showers and laundry facilities in our basement; the people who come to the monthly Taizé service; the children who are fed on the weekends because of the Weekend Nutrition for Northampton Students program; and the people who ask us to baptize and bury their loved ones even though we rarely see them between those two events.
In her book “take this bread” author Sara Miles says “…that impossible word, Jesus, lodged in me like a crumb….I had no idea what it meant; I didn’t know what to do with it. But it was realer than any thought of mine, or even any subjective emotion: it was as real as the actual taste of the bread and the wine. And the word was indisputably in my body now, as if I’d swallowed a radioactive pellet that would outlive my own flesh.” What Sara is describing is her first encounter with taking Communion. One day she found herself drawn to St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco, despite having spent her entire life avoiding religion, adamant that her atheistic upbringing was all she needed; yet here she was accepting the word, the living God, Jesus, into her life.
In 1978, Howard Thurman published a poem titled, The Work of Christmas, which points the way to how to be the church.
When the song of the angels is stilled
When the star in the sky is gone
When the kings and princes are home
When the shepherds are back with their flock
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost
To heal the broken
To feed the hungry
To release the prisoner
To rebuild the nations
To bring peace among others
To make music in the heart.
The conversion of Sara Miles is a Christmas miracle and her life is an example of God’s power manifested in the world. Something drew her to St. Gregory’s, something drew 341 people to this space on Christmas Eve, just like something drew all of us here today. That something, is the word made flesh, Jesus Christ and all of the people who were sent to prepare the way for his coming. John the Baptist was sent to prepare the people for the coming of the Messiah, for Emmanuel, God with us. The joy of Christmas rests in the realization that God dwells among us and it is our turn to be John the Baptist; it is our turn to prepare the world for the return of Christ; but it is also our turn to embody the spirit of God and be the church Thurman embodied in his poem, by finding the lost, healing the broken, feeding the hungry, freeing prisoners, rebuilding nations, and bringing peace to others. It is this work that draws people to God; it is the hope of being found, and healed, and fed, and freed that brings people to God. It is not our buildings, or our traditions, or our prayer book, or any other human construct that draws any of us to God; it is the presence of the Word, the Spirit of God, that binds us to each another and makes us the church that draws us. Some of us feel drawn to the institutional church, but most people don’t and that reality is quickly becoming clear as more and more congregations close their doors. The future of the church does not rest in the pews, it rests in the hearts and minds of the many people who feel connected to God, and it is time that we let go of the idea that they are going to warm our pews more than twice a year, and take the message of Christmas where it belongs, among the people, the church.
Learning by Fire! 