2020-01-07
Brooke Strong
Christmas Eve, 2019
Scripture: Luke 2:1-20
The journalist H. L. Mencken, a famed cultural critic and satirical commentator in the middle of the last century, used to receive more than his fair share of criticism from outraged readers. So he prepared a pre-printed postcard that he would often send to his detractors. The postcard said simply, “Dear Sir or Madam: You may be right. Yours sincerely, H. L. Mencken.” “You may be right.” That was it. Pithy and to the point, it acknowledged his own limits, it ended any further conversation, and it contained a hint of affirmation for the letter-writer. Perfect! (https://www.christiancentury.org/article/publisher/cultivating-uncertainty?fbclid=IwAR26-FQnU40DZh2E0yhET_jGZWPL0Ukpw7GU2QFkTqixinwf9QF76H7od74).
It would be not at all difficult for a critic to object to the story of Jesus’ birth, would it. ‘An angel visiting Mary and telling her she’s going to have a baby? A virgin getting pregnant? Another angel coming to lowly shepherds in the middle of a field late at night? I mean, really—you can’t be serious!’
And to such a critic we can only say: “You may be right.” Maybe science would dispute the story’s details. Maybe history couldn’t verify all its contours. Maybe a Go-Pro camera on Mary’s forehead would have revealed nothing like what the gospel of Luke tells us. You doubt it happened the way it was described? You may be right. People of faith had better not be too certain about life’s mysteries. You can never prove the heart of what faith affirms. If anyone objects to this fantastic story, we might well answer, “You may be right.”
And yet, whether the details of this story are scientifically verifiable is entirely irrelevant. The question is not whether a police officer’s dash-cam or the innkeeper’s doorbell camera would have captured every gesture and movement of the story as Luke tells it. The heart of the story is what lies under its surface. And what lies at its core is richer than anything we can explain or describe: whatever the so-called “facts” were, this story is true.
And the story is true because it evokes what God is about in our lives; it conveys that God is with us in the midst of everything, that God can make all things new. When I was in my late 20s, I felt almost totally lost and alone. I had taken a job as a gardener at a private island estate off the coast of Massachusetts. One week, my task was to dig the rocks out of a circular patch of ground in the front yard so that rose bushes could be planted there. For an entire week—forty hours—with shovel and pitchfork I dug rocks and placed them in a wheelbarrow and hauled them off into the woods. And at the end of that week, that patch of land looked exactly as it had when I started—as though it were still saturated with rocks. I couldn’t see any difference. I literally sat on the edge of the garden at the end of that week and wept. My life felt as dry and lifeless as that rock-laden soil.
Many of you know what this is like. Maybe a dearly-beloved spouse died not long ago, and you feel as though a limb of yours has been amputated, and you wander around in a daze, and maybe you kiss your spouse’s photograph on your bedside table every night as you turn in. Maybe you’ve lost your way in the world—what once gave you joy has turned flat, your work no longer feeds you, little but football and binge-watching occupies your time. Maybe school is an academic and social disaster. Maybe your relationship to the Holy One has dried up—your prayers are rote, your faith seems irrelevant, you can’t remember what it’s like to trust in One greater than yourself.
And when you hear the story of Jesus’ birth tonight, you may well think to yourself, “I don’t get it. There’s nothing here for me. This is all a bunch of nonsense.” So I say to you: “You may be right.” Maybe the story is just drivel, with little power to make a difference.
Maybe, indeed, it is. But as the wise attorney and writer Bryan Stevenson, who wrote the remarkable book Just Mercy, once said, “You know ultimately, we all have to believe things we haven’t seen” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2tOp7OxyQ8). The story Luke tells of Jesus’ birth evokes those “things we haven’t seen.” So here’s what I think: I think God is up to something in your life and in mine. I suspect God is churning in your soul at this very moment. I believe something is burning in you and me, something beautiful is emerging, something is being born in us, even as we speak.
I can’t prove it. But I can point to it, I can see it, I can feel its effects. For someone here, I know, there’s been a slow but persistent thawing in a relationship with an estranged child, a phone call or text here, a birthday card there, the opening of a window that had seemed stuck shut. Someone else has maybe begun to see that they have gifts and potential they didn’t know they had, that they are more and better than the worst things they’ve ever done, that they have a strength and a generosity and a worth that may have been long buried. Yet someone else has come to understand and appreciate a parent who once seemed totally off the mark. It was Mark Twain who once said, “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” Signs—all of them—of refreshment and grace.
Is there proof for any of this—scientific evidence for this growth, this reconciliation, this maturing? Not really. But nothing could be more real. Into your life and mine, often when we least expect it, comes a holy birth—a new fullness, a fresh clarity, a refashioned, or perhaps never-before-seen, confidence and assurance. To the doubter, to the one who scoffs at this story, we could of course say, “You may be right.” No proof. When life is at its fullest, though, as Bryan Stevenson says, we “believe things we haven’t seen.” We fall in love when we’ve wondered if we ever would. We happen into a job that fulfills us deeply. We move to a new community where friendships blossom. New birth.
In all of these it sometimes takes patience to see. None of these things happen overnight. So we learn to wait. When my wife Mary and I were parents of teenagers, one of Mary’s cousins said to us once, “It’s OK. When they hit the teen years, they’re temporarily abducted by aliens. But eventually they do come back.” And I’m sure you who are teenagers can say exactly the same thing about your elders! What we seek and hope for may take a while. And in the meantime, we wait.
Waiting is an intrinsic part of this birthing process. As I’ve said before, the Bible is full of stories of waiting. Abraham and Sarah wait nearly their whole lives for a child. Moses waits forty years in the wilderness to enter the Promised Land. Israel waits seventy years in exile to return to Jerusalem. And Mary waits for the Messiah to be born.
This is the way it is for us, too. Most of us don’t make the varsity in our first year of eligibility. We don’t master a job on the first day of work. We don’t fall for and marry and live happily ever after with the first person we date.
So maybe here’s our task tonight: as we sing “Silent Night,” as we leave here in the cool night air, as we celebrate with friends and family tonight and tomorrow, we take in, we really absorb, that you and I are Mary and Joseph. We go about our lives—we cook our dinner, we fly through frenetic workdays, we listen to podcasts and catch up on social media, we buy and wrap and give and receive presents. And all the while, under the surface, a perhaps unseen gift is insinuating itself into our lives.
Maybe tonight a long-sought peace descends into our frenzy. Maybe a family stands at a grave together in silent and grateful wonder. Maybe someone in the house says something inadvertently hilarious and we’re laughing so hard we can hardly breathe. Maybe a child or grandchild curls up into our lap to hear a story. And maybe, as my wife Mary and I saw last evening on Main St. here in the village, a little girl, about four years old, sticks a letter into the mailbox intended for Santa, and she stretches her arms out and she twirls around and she dances with an exuberant, unrestrained joy. And when these things happen, the world is entirely new. Like Mary and Joseph, we may not understand, we may not be able to make sense of it, we may simply need, as Mary does, to “ponder . . . these things in [our] heart[s]” (Luke 2:19). But all of these, and so many more, are signs of the newness and joy and wonder that God is birthing in our midst.
If you object to this, if you tell me, “Well you can’t see it and you can’t prove it,” I hope I have the grace to say to you, “You may be right.” But I will also witness to you that there are countless gifts bubbling up in your life and in mine. Startling wonders appear, some slowly, some suddenly; surprising hopes and yearnings and moments of peace and sizzling joy and unimagined love arise. If you doubt it, I’ll tell you you may be right. But I’ll also gently insist that Luke is the one who may be most right. Into your life and mine, grace and love are born, this day and always.