E. Scott Winnette
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. E. Scott Winnette
Christmas Eve Homily
December 24, 7:00pm
If you travel to Tennessee and ask my mother for Scott’s childhood photos, she will pull out three large albums of very well organized, chronological, photos each with a personal note. She will start with chubby baby pictures. Note that there are annual photo sequences: the school photos, the progression of soccer team photos, and the Christmas Day photos. You can watch me grow from cute to nerdy, back to cute and then to awkward. If you pay attention to the first twelve years of Christmas at the tree, a pattern will emerge; ~ I looked awful: hunched shoulders, messy hair, a distressed face. Now, it was not because I was ungrateful for the gifts. I just somehow seemed to have a bad attack of asthma every year at Christmas. I smiled for the camera, trying to breathe and look excited.
In the spring of my twelfth year, we had skin tests done to determine my allergies. An amazing welt arose when the doctor tested me for the juniper tree? My mother cried, she did! -- for every Christmas season we cut a juniper tree at my Grandmother’s, dragged it into the house, decorated it, and I inhaled its aromatic fumes till Christmas Day. I was allergic to the Christmas tree!! Mom and Dad purchased an artificial tree for the next year. My Christmas photos began to look better.
I tell you this ironic, personal story -- for tonight preachers all over the country are preaching sermons seeking to re-direct their congregations and themselves. We seek one last time, after a series of Advent sermons, to re-direct Christians from the potent commerce-driven, and resource-devouring secular Christmas. We hope to direct hearts and passion towards the real reason for the season.
An undiluted participation in the secular Christmas, may ironically bring illness into families and the world instead of God’s intended wholeness and peace. As you know, this is a season of great waste: unnecessary purchases, plastic packaging, tossed wrapping paper, the spent fuel of planes, and automobiles, and the abundance of food thrown into the garbage and into the extra fatty tissues around our waists. Sometimes the deepest family disagreements can arise over poorly selected gifts. The deprivations of the poor and homeless are highlighted for them. They are lambasted – just as we are, with commercials convincing us that love is communicated via costly gifts.
Our Christian duty is to live and communicate the real reason for the season. I praise God for your witness. As a community of faith, I am delighted to report that you have given this year more than $19,000 in Angel Gift Tree love. That does not even count all of the wrapped gifts for children.
I push a bit harder this bright evening, that you go a few more steps towards God’s Christmas message. The real reason for this season, particularly as it is interpreted by Luke’s Gospel is a message of peace and hope. All of us are invited to the promises of God’s peaceful redemption of the world. It is a message of joy. All of us are invited to lift our eyes to the angel’s glory and to sing with the angelic host our praises to God. It is a message for the inclusion of those on the margins. The shepherds, who first heard the angel’s good news, were among the outcasts of society and they were valued by God, invited to feast upon the beauty of God incarnate, the Christ Child. We are all invited to join with the angels’ voices singing against hatreds of those who are different.
Luke’s nativity includes an anti-imperialistic message of freedom. Mary and Joseph were among the multitudes that were forced to travel to their hometowns. They traveled so that the Emperor and his ruling classes might squeeze every cent out of their oppressed captives. We are invited to work for the freedom of those who are held captive to the principalities and powers of this world. Listen to a Bible study on the Lukan Nativity. Father Ernesto Cardenal recorded this conversation of poor Nicaruaguans who sought freedom from the tyranny of Somoza’s government.
Rebecca spoke: “From the moment of his birth, God chose conditions like the poorest person, didn’t he? I don’t think God wants great banquets or a lot of money,… or for business to make profits off the celebration of his birth. He wants us to wait for him maybe like Nicaragua is waiting right now, because he was born as a poor child and he wants us all to be poor, right? Or for us to be all equal, and he doesn’t want us to do what they used to do in Managua, where Christmas was only a celebration to spend money (for the ones who had money), to have a good time, to dance or anything. They weren’t celebrating his coming.
In this community in Nicaruagua, they interpreted the Lukan Nativity as proof of God’s love for the poor and from it they gained great hope. With the clarity of the Christmas light, we are invited to open our eyes to the structures of the world’s societies. We are invited to go to the oppressed – like Matthew’s Magi. We can join them in redeeming the world, realizing Christ’s promises. Together we can sing Glory to God with the Angels.
As the conversation continued in Nicaragua, Felix said:
“Jesus came to free the world from these injustices (which still exist). And he came so that we could be united and struggle against these injustices. . . . Because we go right on being like that, with somebody’s foot on our neck. And the rich, how do they look at us? They look down on us. That’s why we’ve got to get together to win. … Christ… was the greatest revolutionary, because being God he identified with the poor and he came down from heaven to become a member of the lower class and he gave his life for us all. The way I see it, we all ought to struggle like that for other people and be like him. Get together and be brave. That way nobody will be without a house, and even if an earthquake knocks his house down he’ll get another one. And nobody will have to go on being humiliated by the rich.”
My parents realized what was making me sick every Christmas and they changed from a real tree to a fake one. I invite you this Christmas to reflect upon your lives as a family and to discern any practices inhibit God’s peace and wholeness. Plan some new ways of living without them. I invite you tonight, or tomorrow morning, as you gather to share the gifts of your love for each other around your trees, to potently share with each other God’s promises of freedom and peace and joy. Counteract our culture’s secular Christmas with faithfulness. I invite you to pray for other’s before you open gifts. Pray for the peace in the world. I invite you to ponder deeply in your hearts God’s call upon you as a family to fight against hunger and poverty. Think of some new ways to befriend the poor. I invite you to consider those in your lives who are ostracized by our society. Brainstorm ways to befriend them and invite them to your Christmas table. As you sing Silent Night join me in inviting the true Gospel Spirit of God’s Child into our hearts.
May it be so for you and for me. Amen.
