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The snowy weather this week reminded of the snow, ice, and inconveniences that greeted us right before Christmas in 2022.
We were so excited to have a new baby in the family that year. I had purchased her first Madame Alexander doll. A soft-bodied creation, the right size for almost one-year-old Freya to hold and cuddle. A Lego village with at least 800 pieces for Tad. A telescope for Briar, safely packed in a box the size of a small piano. But Christmas passed and New Year’s too and the gifts all sat in our living room unopened because they didn’t make it to their destinations. The weather and illness and blended family arrangements played havoc with our plans to visit children and grandchildren. We had to let it go…we would see them soon. And we’ve learned over time to be content with what is. We had many pleasures of the season to enjoy and were most thankful for the blessings which have came our way. Do you remember the Christmas of 2022? All day long on the 23rd and 24th, I received texts and calls from church and neighbors and family reporting various problems being encountered due to the severe winter weather. On Christmas Eve I joked that some of you deserved extra credit for coming out on such a frightfully cold night, knowing you would be returning to a cold house or a cold house with frozen water pipes or a cold house with frozen water pipes and no electricity. But, for those moments together, all was calm, all was bright. In the moments following Jesus’ birth, all was calm, all was bright. The gospel writers have told us that Mary swaddled and fed her newborn son with tender care and Joseph guarded their safety. Stabled beasts and grazing sheep filled the place with pungent warmth. Lowing cattle and cooing doves sang lullabies to the newborn babe, a straw-filled manger for his bed. And all was calm. All was bright. But, not for long. Just a few days after singing Silent Night, the glow of candlelight on our faces, we come to Matthew’s story of terror and furtive flight. The world into which Jesus is born is full of brokenness. The stain of human sin is all over the world God created and called “good.” Real life involves pain and suffering. Not one of us is spared. Evil is real and every generation faces a Herod or two. Back in December of 2013, the world watched with horror the atrocities taking place in Syria. The war produced record numbers of refugees…people fleeing for their lives. According to Unicef, one Syrian baby was born in a refugee camp every hour. The weather was bitterly cold and an outbreak of polio further threatened everyone. The need for medical care, food, clothing, and shelter overwhelmed relief organizations. More than one million Syrian children in that year were declared refugees. Children. Children whose grandparents might have given them presents in some other year. Children whose parents and grandparents may have taught them to sing carols or entrusted little hands to place the Christ child in the family nativity set. When all was calm and all was bright. Rachel wept for the children of Israel. Who is weeping now? Who is weeping for the young and the old and the sick and the bombed out in Gaza and Ukraine? Who weeps for those Central and South Americans who risk everything to find solace somewhere? Who weeps for the neglected and abused on our own blocks? Who weeps for all our brothers and sisters in California who have lost so much? Who weeps that all is not calm. All is not bright. Pastor Sharon Blezard says, in a sense, we are all refugees…aliens in a foreign land, a place that is not our ultimate home. Years ago, at the Beverly Hills Church, one of the beloved members told me about the song he wanted sung at his funeral. “This World is Not My Home.” I assured him that this world had benefitted by his presence and not to plan on leaving it anytime soon. He complied but we did eventually have to let him go to that other world, to the tune of his requested song. The truth is, he had it right. We, who call ourselves Christian, are citizens of that other realm as surely as we are citizens of this one. We dwell in tension between discipleship and culture, faith and fantasy…the temporal and the eternal. Such is the story of faith. Jesus escaped the death Herod sought for him. Thank you, God. But, the powers of the Roman Empire and the powerful religious leaders of his day would seek to destroy Jesus for the duration of his brief life. Sharon Blezard reminds us that most of us have some insulation against the harshness of life. We have family, or work, or a faith community to support us. Jesus, as far as we know, never married. Although his mother, Mary, seems to have been present for the entirety of his life, we hear little of a relationship with Joseph, the man who raised him, who taught him the faith and a trade. We don’t think Jesus had any children and we know he owned no property and depended on the hospitality of others for room and board. Jesus, we are told, had no place to lay his head. And yet, this infant king we celebrate, who grew in wisdom and stature, full of grace and truth, was God incarnate. The Savior of the world, Emmanuel, God-with-us, walking around in skin and bones. He modeled a way of life that lifted up the refugees and dispossessed, the needy, the un-loved and the un-lovely, all to usher in the reign of peace. Jesus established the kingdom of heaven right here on the earth…laid out for us the possibility that all un-holy terrors of might and fright may be vanquished by selfless love and sacrifice. If you have never heard me say this before, hear it now, on the first Sunday we gather in the new year, the world should not be divided over love and who deserves our help. The country should not be divided over love and who deserves our care. And the church, for heaven’s sake, should not be divided over love and being the hands, feet, and heart of Jesus Christ when people are in need. So, on this 3rd Sunday after Christmas, as we sit among the season’s beauty, we acknowledge the disasters suffered by God’s children around the globe and right now in California. See the plight of today’s refugees, for so many have nowhere to go, no comforts, no work, and precious little hope. Weep for the children…and their mothers and fathers. Pray for all those who are being called on to help. For those who are responsible for providing services. For all those in positions of authority, that they may work together to meet the peoples’ needs. Respond if you are moved to help. But don’t stop there. Set your intentions on hope, peace, joy, and love. Bow your knee, your head, and your heart, and lift them to God and God will fill you with purpose and power and praise for the Word made flesh, who came that we might live, never only for ourselves, and never only for Christmas and its innumerable blessings, but for its Christ. May you be richly blessed in the days and months ahead. Amen. Comments are closed.
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PastorCinda Harkless Archives
April 2025
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