THAT IS THAT

December 29, 1985, 11:00 a.m. Worship Service
John M. Buchanan
Fourth Presbyterian Church

“And the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all
they had heard and seen..."

: Scripture

Psalm 111
Isaiah 53:1-6
Luke 2:15~-20

We never learn what happened next to the shepherds. Was life any different
for them? Did they become followers of Jesus, 30 years later?.

Or did they, upon returning -- praising and glorifying God for all they had
seen -- simply resume shepherding with a pleasant memory to keep?

The permanent effect of the celebration of Christ's birth is the concern.
What difference has it made?

One of the pieces I try to remember to read at Christmas is For the Time

Being, W. H. Auden's Christmas Oratorio. I have a number of favorite passages.
One of them -~- the one which always sounds like the text for the day on the
first Sunday after Christmas, is this one:

"Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes --
Some have got broken -- and carrying them up the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe, must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school.

There are enough leftovers to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week --
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,

Stayed up so late, attempted -- quite unsuccessfully --

to love all of our relatives, and in general

Grossly overestimated our powers.

Once again as in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable

Possibility, once again we have sent him away

Begging though to remain his disobedient servant..."

It: takes such a long time to get ready. To live on Michigan Avenue, in fact,

is to have the best seats in the house to watch Americans prepare for the event
in ways that are determined, committed, but also creative, breathtakingly
beautiful, painstakingly elaborate. With the innocent eyes of newcomers we
watched -- and heard last August the talk about the twinkling lights, and saw
the first wreath and candle in September, and observed the preparations for

the great tree, with equal delight -- in November, and cheered on and encouraged

the electricians who decorated the trees on Michigan Avenue before Thanksgiving.
The church, of course, has traditionally observed Advent, a four week period of
preparation, but we -- along with the rest of the populace -- received our
Christmas Savings check in October which, all things considered, is probably
the tangible sign that serious business is about to commence.

I do not lament the extended preparation time. In fact, I welcome those earliest
signs of Christmas as cheerful, tantalizing reminders that something glorious is
coming in the future. What interests me is how quickly it is over. The older
tradition of the church is to observe Advent for four weeks and then to celebrate
Christmas -- Christmastide -- for twelve days, until Epiphany, the date tradition
assigns for the arrival in Bethlehem of the Magi. Reality, however, comes with
the advertising supplements that fell out of the paper on Christmas morning,
announcing an hour before we opened our gifts -~ after Christmas sales, and
showing some clothing items with a decidedly spring look to them.

Malcolm Boyd wondered once whether it ever arrives at all. “On December 24 it
hasn't come -- you have to wait ‘til Christmas to open the presents. On December
26 it is over -- we've got to clear up the mess and take the tree down. As a

result we don't let Christmas come at all. Because, by its very nature, it
cannot be contained within a tight time period, any more than God can be bottled-
up inside a church Building to be visited once a week for an hour." (Malcolm Boyd)

We made a substantial investment in preparing for Christmas: financial, physical,
emotional and spiritual. And sometime last Wednesday it came and went. That is
that. Today, inevitably, we feel Let down, exhausted, washed out, drained. And
yet, I wonder if this may not be one of the most important Sundays of the year

for us? It is the day, I would submit, to heed W. H. Auden's British cynicism
about the cultural festivity, the "seeing once again the actual vision and
failing...to do more than entertain it as an agreeable possibility."

If there is any sense in which we Christians are the stewards of this feast, it
is our special responsibility, it seems to me to remind ourselves, and anyone
else who nappens to be Listening in, that there is more to this story than the
birth. I am not proposing that fashionable elitism which insists on theological
purity and scorns Christmas celebrations which are not as aesthetically proper
as our tastes dictate. We don't own the celebration after all. The birth itself --
and its first celebration occurred at a significant distance from institutions . :
of religion. Our task is simply to remember that there is a significant part
of the whole story which occurs after the birth.

Staying close to the Old Testament is a good way to avoid entrapment in. super-
ficiality. The lesson this morming, for instance, is part of a letter written
to the exiled Jewish Community in Babylon in the sixth century before Christ.

In it the prophet promises deliverance from their captivity but then warns,

with absolute realism, that people will not always be pleased when God's servant
appears. "Who has believed what we have heard?", he inquired. God's activity
will not be universally appealing. ‘In fact, the popular expectations people
harbored about God's coming might prevent them from recognizing the event when
it happened.

"He grew up before him like a young plant, and like a
dry root out of dry ground: he had no form or comeliness
that we should lock at him, and no beauty that we should
desire him." (Isaiah 53:2)

Suddenly we are removed, not only from the superficiality of the cultural
Christmas, but from the elegant simplicity of the nativity to confront the
disturbing complexity of a man who didn't fit the pattern: a Messiah who
didn't look much like a Messiah. Suddenly we are jerked away from sentiment
of a baby with universal human appeal, to the uncomfortable adversary who
always seemed to end up on the wrong side of every issue.

And the prophet doesn't let it go there. Not only won't most people recognize
him, not only will God's servant have to deal with powerful people who don't

like the way he looks, acts, wears his hair, and dresses but hatred and violence:
will be directed to him. Suddenly we are facing the distinct possibility of a
cross several decases down the road:

"He was despised and rejected...

A man of sorrows acquainted with grief: And as one from
whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed
him not." (Isaiah 53:3)

One of the enduring lessons we must always learn from our Hebrew roots, and

‘our Jewish brothers and sisters, is that the religious experience is not all
sweetness and light: that getting involved with God can be very risky business,
that happiness and success and fulfillment do not always result from piety,
television religion notwithstanding.

In the meantime, God's servant, the prophet warned, may not be recognizable,

may not be what people expect God's servant to look like. If there is meaning—
ful contemporary figure in the birth narrative it is surely the Innkeeper. In
the midst of some pretty heavenly goings-on, he is utterly believable. He
sounds like us. He did what the prophet said people would do when God's servant
appeared -- failed to recognize him. He had other things on his mind: cashing
in on the unexpected year-end bonanza precipitated by the census of all the
travelers returning home. We can't fault him for that: it was his business.
Besides he didn't turn them away. To his everlasting credit there was the

milk of human kindness in him to provide shelter, however crude.

But he didn't recognize the significance of what was happening: couldn't see
the activity of God in the mundane events playing themselves out in front of
his eyes and in his stable out back. ;

That was the essence of the prophet's warning five and one half centuries earlier,
It is still the problem. If the New Testament is to be trusted God is at work

in the world where people are loved and accepted for who they are, and affirmed
for what they can be. The Kingdom of God is in the world, the New Testament
teaches, wherever hungry people are fed, and naked people clothed and homeless
people sheltered, and blind people given sight, and sick people healed. If

God is in this world of ours, in ways more profound than a plastic Jesus in

a department store manger, the Bible teaches, it will be where people believe --
not as an intellectual exercise or even an emotional spasm -- but where because
of their belief justice is equal, and human dignity is celebrated, and oppressed
people are set free. Needless to say, those are not ideas upon which to build
a popular program. Those ideas don't attract much of a constituency these
days, politically, socially, religiously. Yet they are the characteristics

of the kingdom which broke inte the history of the world with this amazing
birth. They are the ideas the man, the baby became espoused, lived and for
Which he died.

It was fashionable a while ago to lament the worldliness and secularism of
Christmas and to avoid writing “Christmas" in its abbreviated form —- with an
"X" for Christ. It was a Christian's duty, it was suggested, to confine the
festivities to remembering this birth of Jesus and to remain unsullied by
Santa, Rudolph, and all that. But that's not the problem: never has been:
never will be. Christians ought to be the first to cheer an infusion of
generosity and peace and love and the experience of childlike wonder. That's
not the problem. Besides -- the cultural celebration is perfectly capable of
appropriating the nativity if it will make people happy -- or sell more stuff.
No one has trouble with baby Jesus, except King Herod and it can be argued

that he alone in the nativity drama recognizes Jesus for who he was. Everyone
can feel good about a manger baby. It's the man who gets himself and everyone
around him in trouble.

Every year, a variation on that theme emerges as someone sues a school system
or a municipality for using overtly Christmas symbols or songs or customs in
the public domain, And while it is always a jolt, emotionally, to have to deal
with the possible offensiveness of our dearest symbols to some people, legally
and constitutionally, there really isn't much argument. The founders of this
country had had quite enough of government sponsored religion. One of the
better, more creative and stunningly successful ideas was separation of church
and state and the freedom of every citizen to be or not to be religious.
Recently, however, those who wish to preserve the right of the Christian community
in our culture to enjoy public sponsorship, have advanced an argument that is
disturbing, namely that the cross is not, after all, a religious symbol at all,
and the star of Bethlehem is only a bit of folk lore, not at all specifically
and precisely Christian. That, it seems to me, is the real danger about which
people who care for the integrity of the faith -~ ought to be exercised. If

we have to deny the specific content of our symbols, in order to have them
displayed at City Hall -- we have, in an ultimate way, caved in to the world.

Popular novelist, Joseph Heller, has dealt with this issue over the years with
great wit but also great power. Heller happens to be Jewish. His novel,
Catch 22, is acclaimed for its thoughtulness and scathing cynicism about war-
making. Listen to several paragraphs: a chaplain to a bomber group in Italy
has been summoned by the commanding officer:

“We were speaking about conducting religious services in
the briefing room before every mission. Is there any

reason why we can't?"

"No sir,"the chaplain mumbled.

“Then we'll begin with this afternoon's mission."

The Colonei's hostility softened as he applied himself

to details..."Now I want you to give a lot of thought

to the kind of prayers we're going to say. I don't want
anything heavy or sad. I'd like you to keep it light
and snappy, something that will send the boys out feeling
pretty good. Do you know what I mean? I don't want any
of this Kingdom of God or Valley of Death stuff. That's
all too negative. What are you making such a sour face
for?"

"I'm sorry, sir," the chaplain stammered. “I happened
to be thinking of the Twenty Third Psalm just as you
said that"...

"That's the one I was referring to. It's out. ...why
can't we take a more positive approach? Couldn't we
pray for a tighter bomb pattern?"

"Well, yes, sir, I suppose so," the chaplain answered
hesitantly. "You shouldn't even need me if that's all
you wanted to do. You could do that yourself."

. "T know I could," the Colonel responded tartly. “But
what do you think you're here for?... Your job is to
lead us in prayer, and from now on you're going to lead
us in a prayer for a tighter bomb pattern before every
mission. Is that clear? I think a tighter bomb pattern
is something worth praying for... I suppose we'll have
to keep you waiting outside until the briefing is over,
because all that information is classified. We can slip
you in while Major Darnley is synchronizing the watches...
We'll allocate about a minute and a half for you on the
Schedule."

One of the great challenges to the church, even more dangerous because it

is friendly -- not hostile -- is a vague, amorphous religiosity that feels
good about the birth of a baby but doesn't know about, or want to know about,
or if it knows -- care about -- the man the baby became and the ideas he
espoused.

That, it. seems to me, is the issue that presents itself on this Sunday after
Christmas. What makes that birth so shatteringly beautiful, so unspeakably
lovely, is that the child lived to adulthood, and in adulthood taught a whole
new way of seeing the world and other people. What makes the birth so aston-
ishing is that the baby lived with his parents, through childhood and adolescence
into manhood, and in. time was so full of the strong love of God and power and
spirit of God that he gave his whole life, obeying his sense of God's will,

and actually lived out his revolutionary new ideas, lowing so thoroughly

people couldn't believe their eyes -- even when his radical and strong love

took him to the cross.

“The manger scene is only one stopping place on this journey of faith," Isabel
Anders wrote in the recent Christian Century. "The tranquility of the manger
moves us deeply, but it should never transfix us. The rest of Christ's journey --
and our journey -- remains." (Christian Century, 12/18-25/85, p. 1168)

Centuries ago, when the church's Christmas and the culture's were synonymous,
the birth was regarded more consistently as the beginning of a larger and
profound story. Ms. Anders cites a léth century carol:

“This little Babe so few days old,

Is come to rifle satan's fold;

All hell doth at his presence quake,
Though he himself for cold do shake."

There is wisdom and power in that... that image of all hell quaking at the
presence of a shivering baby.

That enormous claim is what we have made once again. That is Auden's "actual
vision" which we have briefly seen. The word has been made flesh. The light
shines in the darkness. The infant Jesus became the Lord Christ and summons

us to follow him and, in his power, commands us to be converted, to turn
around, to know God's unconditional love and to live it out in our lives --

as he did -- no less than that! We are called to salvation and because of our
salvation to be bearers of God's peace, to hold fast to the good, to strengthen
the fainthearted and support the weak, to honor all people, to love and serve
God and rejoice in the power of the spirit.

What we have dared celebrate is the life of God poured into the life of our
world in the life of one who is our brother, who showed us how to live with
both peace and conviction, and how to die with confidence and courage.

What we have sung and shared in seasonal greetings, and invested in our gift
giving, and privately wept abcut again is the love of God come among us --
come to give us life, come to Save us...

“Now we must dismantle the tree

Putting the decorations back into

their cardboard boxes...

The holly and the mistletoe must be

taken down and burnt.

++.we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do’more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility..."

That is that... Or is it?

lord God of all history, all nations, all people: we have Seen the actual

vision. We give thanks to you for the goodness and loveliness of the celebration.
We are grateful for love affirmed, generosity expressed and reconciliation exper—
ienced. Having celebrated, give us the courage now to be disciples of Jesus
Christ, our Lord, Amen.