Christmas Eve Homily
Persuaded to Dance
Luke 2:8-15
And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."
Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
"Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace good will to all."
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about."
Intro:
It must have been busy being an angel the night that God came to earth. Babies do tend to get a lot of attention from finger counting fathers and cheek kissing mothers and frantic doting grandparents. But the world tends to spin at its own frenetic pace without hesitating unless there is a presidential motor-cade or flashing blue lights and police sirens wailing or expensive, well-designed advertising campaigns. Jesus didn’t really have that. He did have an angel choir which you would think would create more stir than sirens or motorcades or TV commercials, but they didn’t. I imagine, that hard as they tried and loudly and they sang, the angel choir just couldn’t make itself heard by most.
Scene 1: Herod
Herod sat late into the night at his desk. One small lamp was on so as not to aggravate his headache. The Angel’s appeared in a flash of light, thousands somehow perched upon a book-case, but Herod neither sees nor hears them. The phone rings and King Herod arranges paper-clips into straight lines in the top drawer as he speaks,
‘I told you to update me precisely at 10:30. You are three minutes late. Have you arrested protesters at the Temple? No, No, you haven’t? The crowd is larger? I knew this census idea was bad. Speeches. What speeches? OF course they don’t like to pay taxes, who does? Call the reserve officers in and use tear gas if you need to. Honestly, why do I pay you for this, I’m doing all the security planning for myself.
Herod turns to his bookcase, upon which the Angel’s are still singing Gloria, and begins to align perfectly the spine of every book with the edge of the shelf upon which it sits. He pinches the bridge of his nose between fore-finger and thumb, completely missing a rousing chorus. What? Someone has a bull-horn and is rallying the people to resist the draft? It will not be me who answers to Caesar should draft-dodging begin. It will be you Mr. Security Director. They are chanting, and singing? Send in the police already. Some have stones and sticks? Then call the Guard. They seem organized? Honestly. They are marching here. Open fire you fool. That why we draft themin the first place… to keep to do the dirty work
.
Herod cannot hear the angels no matter how loudly they sing. Frankly Herod misses many noises. He arranges people like the paperclips in his desk but then ignores the everyday cries of people sleeping on park benches and loosing their health care to budget cuts. So maybe we aren’t so sad that he refuses to hear the angels.
Who shrug and, flash, they are gone.
Scene 2: The People
The Angels re-appear on a busy sidewalk in down-town Bethlehem, but you or I wouldn’t see the flash because of the flashing lights, neon signs and head-lights. They begin to sing but car horns are blaring and they can’t seem to stay on the same beat because of all the car stereos that make the air thump. Even when the angels do get things rolling with a Peace on Earth goodwill to men’ it seems that someone’s cell phone rings, or some else stoops to look into their shopping bag and the sound of angel voices is lost like star-light in the city glare. They hover above the crowds and you’d think that someone would notice, but mostly people are looking at sale signs, or browsing in shop windows for dancing Elmo’s, television satellites, herme scarves or sneeking a peek at the latest Abercrombie and Fitch Catalog.
To be fair, not everyone misses the angel music because of their consumer-induced coma. Some are working a double-shift to pay the oil bill. Some fighting the insurance company to cover an emergency room visit for their infant. Some are on their way home to get grandma her medication on time. One man is just trying to get home after a 10-hour day of being trampled on by his supervisor. One woman on her way to pick up the kids from twelve hours at the sitter. She’ll go home and for the first Christmas it will just be her and the kids. The waitress is trying to pay for college, the bar-tender is worried about his son getting beat up at school, the mechanic is just tired and wants to get some sleep, the cop is tired of one domestic dispute call after another. You can’t blame the angels for getting discouraged. But you can’t blame the people for being distracted either. The point is though, the angels sing to the rich and power and are ignored. They sing to the happy and satisfied and just can’t be heard. They sing to everyday people, but they are drowned out in the noise of every day.
The angels shrug and, flash, they are gone.
And it would be for good too.
Scene 3: Shepherds.
But God won’t give up easily. Someone will listen to this good news of great joy and until you find them, he tells the choir, you will keep singing about my boy Emmanuel.
So they keep singing and you know the rest of the story. The shepherds see the flash of the angel choir and fall down like they had too much Mad Dog 20-20. They hear the song and at first are so frightened of the magnificence of the noise that they try to dig trenches behind rocks and climb the nearest trees and hug the fuzzy belly of the nearest ewe hoping to hide.
But then they hear the words.
"Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace good will, toward men”
Maybe we aren’t surprised, perhaps a bit, well, delighted that those who have had it easy for so long aren’t serenaded by God’s angelic choir. Maybe we all find a little guilty pleasure in the fact that God won’t sing to people who ignore or manipulate others. But the fact that it’s not just them who don’t hear the song, the fact that it’s normal everyday people like you and me who miss the concert… that is surprising… to me anyway.
And what is more surprising than that is the fact that shepherds aren’t really any different from Herod or the people. Some Shepherds are just miniature Herod’s self-centered, nasty, some hit their wives, some steal from their children’s bank acct, some drink too much, some work too little and still get paid. Some are regular people, head down, working hard, trying to make ends meat, salt of the earth kind of people.
Oddly enough that is the good news. No amount of study of the Christmas story will uncover for you and I some moral quality that the shepherds had that you and I don’t. Some were good people, some were the neighbors we call the cops on all the time. In the end the we are no less deaf to God’s love song that the Herod’s of the world, and the only difference between us and the shepherds is that they listened. And then, they joined dance. The point is that God kept the choir singing until someone heard the song which is…
Jesus is born
God’s living peace and active, concrete, real, honest to goodness good will
Has moved in right next door.
All we have to do is listen to the tune
And join the dance.
The shepherds stood up and danced and sang. They weaved around like the town drunk and capered like 14 year old gymnasts. They sang at the top of their lungs, and they sat down and listened and thought about God’s good will finally arriving for real and they cried some of them.
Then they got up, went home and stopped hitting their wives and started spending more time with the kids. They dumped the grey goose down the sink and they called the sister they had refused to talk to for years and invited her over for dinner that night. They still caused a ruckus in town every once in a while, but this time it was a ruckus for a homeless shelter or for an after-school program for the kids or because they wanted their tax money to buy something besides bombs and guns. Life didn’t get all rosey 100% of the time. They still had to struggle to pay the bills and they still had to take care of sick relatives and school yard bullies and their kids runny noses and their own exhaustion.
But now, we know that Peace, true inner peace, is possible.
We don’t have to work for it, it can’t be earned, We can’t drink it.
We can’t buy it either.
God just sent it down for free…
We know that good will because we stopped everything else
And started to really listen to God’s song
We stopped to see God’s son.
And God’s goodness is no longer something that seems far away…
It lives in the everyday and invades the mundane and pervades our working and talking and shopping and disagreeing and worrying and celebrating and weeping…
And we, the everyday shepherds are changed, deep, down inside,
Because we stopped, listened and were persuaded to dance
We too, can feel that love.
Jesus is Born.
Peace on Earth, Good will toward all…good will for you and me…
The shepherds, alone, heard the song, and joined the dance.
I hope that you too tonight, hear the song, see God’s glory, feel the love
And are persuaded to dance
Amen.
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