RCL Year C (Christmas Eve) - December 24, 2009

The Rev'd Kenneth H. Saunders III

Christ Church - Cleveland, NC

RCL Year C (Christmas Eve) - December 24, 2009

Isaiah 9:2-7

Titus 2:11-14

Luke 2:1-20

Sometimes we think too much… I know that I do, especially when it comes to preaching on Christmas Eve. Most preachers that I know are terrified of it, I think it’s because there are so many more in the congregation than usual…

People that come on this holy night to experience the wonder, the awe and the mystery of the miraculous birth of Jesus in a stable in Bethlehem. Most congregations double in size on the holy feast days of Christmas and Easter… That in itself is a mystery…

So, I thought and prayed this year until my head hurt and then I thought and prayed some more... and in my study, I ran across some folks… folks that seem to have been short changed in the nativity story… folks that appear right in the middle of all the action in the gospel lesson that we just heard.

Shepherds!

You remember the shepherds… every young boy wants to be a shepherd in the Christmas pageant. It's the character in the reenactment that gets to wear their bath robe and put one of mamma’s checkered dish-towels on their head... You know... The Shepherds... the ones that watched over their flocks in the field by night…

The working class… grubby, and smelly, just trying to earn a living. If Mike Rowe were around then, he would have probably interviewed them for the show Dirty Jobs. They were classed with the other working stiffs… folks the tanners, sailors, butchers, camel jockeys, and other despised occupations…

But unlike these other occupations, Shepherds were different, since they were away from home at night they were unable to protect their families and therefore they were considered dishonorable. These folks were the lowest of the low, and yet God chose them first…

God chose the shepherds… and revealed to them the Good News of the miraculous birth. An Angel appeared – and stood before these shepherds and the glory of God surrounded them and they were scared - to - death…

And the Angel said, "don’t be afraid – I am bringing you Good News to share with everybody! ALL PEOPLE!!" And the angel told them where to find the child wrapped in bands of cloth and laying in a feeding trough. And then there was a bunch of Angles singing… "Glory to God in the Highest and on Earth Peace to everyone! with whom God is Well Pleased!"

And the shepherds decide to go and see this miraculous thing that God had made known to them. And they found it just as the Angel had told them, Mary & Joseph and a child laying in a manger (a feeding trough) wrapped in strips of cloth…

But the amazing part of this story is… it didn’t stop there.

These simple shepherds were so excited by what they saw, they went and told others about the child… and all who the shepherds told were amazed… The mystery and awe that surrounds us on this holy night is partly made possible by the shepherds… God chose to reveal God’s self to the lowest of the low – the dishonored in society and tell them of the miracle of the birth of Christ…

A miraculous birth to a peasant family that didn’t have a place to stay when they traveled… and didn’t even have a bed for their new born baby… God trusted that the shepherds would go and see what had taken place and share it with the world…

This is just the beginning of the story of Jesus who is the Christ… A man who we know will turn the world on its ear, disrupt society and make an impact like no other has ever made… In 1926, Dr. James Allen wrote a poem. The poem is called One Solitary Life some of you may have heard it before… I would like to share that poem with you to give us something to ponder in our hearts this evening…

One Solitary Life

He was born in an obscure village

The child of a peasant woman

He grew up in another obscure village

Where he worked in a carpenter shop

Until he was thirty

He never wrote a book

He never held an office

He never went to college

He never visited a big city

He never travelled more than two hundred miles

From the place where he was born

He did none of the things

Usually associated with greatness

He had no credentials but himself

He was only thirty three

His friends ran away

One of them denied him

He was turned over to his enemies

And went through the mockery of a trial

He was nailed to a cross between two thieves

While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing

The only property he had on earth

When he was dead

He was laid in a borrowed grave

Through the pity of a friend

Nineteen centuries have come and gone

And today Jesus is the central figure of the human race

And the leader of mankind's progress

All the armies that have ever marched

All the navies that have ever sailed

All the parliaments that have ever sat

All the kings that ever reigned put together

Have not affected the life of mankind on earth

As powerfully as that one solitary life

God humbled himself and was born as a human...

God came to live among us as one of us…

God didn’t come to us in glorious splendor, he came to us from a poor family that had no place to stay when they traveled, so they stayed in a barn.

He didn’t have royal robes and fine garments, he was bound with rags – strips of cloth or swaddling clothes. He didn’t live a life of luxury… he didn’t even have a bed. He was laid in a feeding trough…

But it IS from that feeding trough that he continues to feed the whole world!

Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among all people with whom God is well pleased! Amen!

RCL Year C (Advent 2) - December 6, 2009

The Rev'd Kenneth H. Saunders III
Christ Church, Cleveland, NC

RCL Year C - Advent 2 - December 6, 2009

Baruch 5:1-9
Canticle 16
Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6

(transcribed from audio - sermon preached without notes or manuscript)

This time of year reminds me of my mother. I know that she reads my sermons regularly, so God help me when she gets hold of this one. I am going to talk about her a little bit, but in a kind way… During the season of Advent, my mother is always… oh, let’s say fussy. To the point of the halls decked just perfectly. When I was growing up, there was almost a tree in every room, a rope of holly on the mantle of the fireplace, candles on the tables and a single white candle in each window, and of course fake snow… and I am not talking about the spray stuff, I am saying the bag o plastic shreds – where you put one handful on each branch of the tree… I even think she is looking for some this year, but hasn’t been able to find it. On top of the decorating, she always found time to bake. Fruit cakes, cookies, cakes, and even one year made candy. Her preparations were meticulous, and everything had to be just so.

We are called, like I said last week, to a “preparation” in Advent... careful, meticulous preparation. But John calls us today (John the Baptizer) to a different kind of preparation. A preparation for the coming of the messiah.

The words from the 40th Chapter of Isaiah, the prophet, are echoed by Luke the evangelist… Make straight paths… straighten out the crooked spaces, make the high places low and the low places high… but, do this in the wilderness.

Something very interesting that I think we need to pay attention to. The place between Egypt and the Promised Land always involves “wilderness.” The way to salvation, the salvation of our God in Jesus Christ always involves wilderness. The wilderness places that you have heard me speak of before. Those are the places of chaos. Places of the wild and crazy. The places where demons dwell. Places where food is not bought and can’t be found. The wilderness is the lowest point, where people had to go to fully rely and depend on God in order for God to bring them into the promised land. To bring them to salvation.

So, if you think of it like that, in order to find our way to Christ, who is our salvation… to find our way to the promised land, we have to go through the wilderness. It is a way that we go by preparing ourselves. Preparation through personal discovery. It means wrestling with things in our lives that we otherwise don’t want to mess with.

It makes me think, “where is the wilderness?” Our mere lives are the wilderness, and we are on a journey through the wilderness, where we are looking for direction, where we are looking for guidance, where we are looking to be fed and nurtured as we grow and go along the way.

We are looking for God to make those paths straight, and our narrow ways to be made smooth, because sometimes we come along boulders in the path, and regardless how much we try, we cannot remove those boulders by ourselves. We have to trust God and let God provide us with that smooth path. We have to come together as a community to bring forth the Kingdom of God, and move those rocks together. To make that path straight, and the wilderness that much more tolerable.

Regardless of how fussy we may get this time of year, John is there to tell us the way to the Kingdom of God. The way to Christ. In fact, that is one of the reasons that I picked the illustration that was used on the front of the bulletin, it is Leonardo Da vinci’s portrait of John the Baptist. If you notice the in the painting he is pointing up. In most of the artist renditions of John, John is pictured pointing up, pointing the way to salvation.

That is what John does for us. John through his, as you have heard me call it before, his unexpected, unlikely messages. He was one of those messengers that you wouldn’t expect anyone to listen to him. But he is so strange, he gets our attention. He points the way to salvation.

He is the son of the high priest, Zachariah, but he doesn’t conform to the norms of society for that sort of family. He dresses in camel hair and puts a leather belt around his waist and eats locust and wild honey, and tells the people to come and follow me, we are going out to the wilderness, we are going out to discover those places in our lives where we need that true change. In Greek it is called metanoia, a real change of heart, changing the way from a sinful life to a life of righteousness.

We are called out to the wilderness to discover those places in our lives where we need metanoia. Where we need to make a change and repent of that sin, and then we can prepare the way for Christ to come. Not only as a child in a manger… cause we love the baby stories – we love the heavenly host of angels and the manger and the animals – it’s very very nice, but that is not exactly what Advent is all about. Advent is sometimes about scary things, of an apocalyptic or eschatological nature, in preparation for Christ’s coming again in might and great glory.

So we take this time of preparation, and if we loose some of the fussy-ness in our lives and go over to the other side and think more about what we can do to prepare ourselves, to prepare our souls and bodies to see the Christ who is coming, who is coming again. But we can’t do it by ourselves, we do that as a community of faith, because we are here in the wilderness of our lives on a journey. It is a journey through this life.

When we go forward from this place, we should think about how we can be that prophetic voice that cries out to others in this wilderness of our lives and lead other to that repentance (that metanoia) that change and conversion in their life.

That change and conversion that needs to take place. It needs to take place in their lives like it took place in our lives so that we can receive the Christ.

So as we go forward from this place, and think about how the preamble to today's lesson would be written in a more modern language… we could say, in the first year of the presidency of Barack Obama, when Beverly was Governor of North Carolina, and John was elected Mayor of Cleveland… a voice cried out in the wilderness of North Carolina, make straight the paths, make low the high places, remove all the obstacles that lay in between, and prepare the way of the Christ to come among us.