Christmas -2012

“How silently, how silently,

The wondrous gift is giv’n!”

Preaching on a day like Christmas, the Nativity of the Lord, is both exhilarating and frightening. Exhilarating, because the feast is filled with joy and hope. No matter what our life circumstance somehow, on Christmas, we are able to set aside our concerns and disappointments and in some measure enter into the meaning and mystery of the feast. Even if life is difficult at the moment, memories of the joys of Christmas past often sustain us.

Preaching today is also frightening, even for the most seasoned of pastors. Why? Because expectations are so high. Everyone is hoping to hear a word that will encourage, a word that will direct, a word that will sustain and give reason for renewed hope in a world that sometimes disappoints, a world that we know all too well is far from perfect. And so what is a preacher to do? Well, I know what this preacher does. He simply shares what has been the insight, the word, the message that he has heard in his own heart with the hope that said word will speak to you as well.

This year, as ironic as it may seem, on a day when words like “gloria” and “triumphant” punctuate our liturgy, the word that most speaks to me is: silence.

Remember, there were no roving reporters wandering the streets of sleepy Bethlehem looking for a story. Joseph did not have a cell phone to call the relatives back home in Nazareth to tell them Mary have delivered a son in, of all places, a cave in royal David’s city. The shepherds were not texting and tweeting the local herdsmen to tell them a child had been born. No, the humble birth of this child, born under the most incomprehensible of circumstances,  happened in silence.

Oh, decades later, after they understood the significance of this marvelous birth, Luke and Matthew would retell the story, adding  shepherds and angels, wise men and census takers and innkeepers to help the reader, you and me, understand that something earth-shattering, something history-making, had happened when God broke through in human history and gave the world his son as savior. But that night, that first Christmas night, was a night when, as the carol tells us, the wondrous gift was giv’n in silence in one of the stable-caves surrounding Bethlehem.

God never imposes himself on anyone. Despite his great love and will that all be drawn to him, you and I are never forced, never coerced to submit to God’s desire that we be one with him. The choice is always ours. And so a silent birth in a sleepy back-water village, far from the center of the hustle and bustle of Jerusalem or the imperial majesty of Rome, seems most appropriate and most consistent with God’s way of inviting his own to deeper union with him. 

Remember, the angel Gabriel did not appear to Mary at the Nazareth well in full view of the jar-toting women of the village who had gathered there, to invite her, who had found favor with God, to give birth to a son who would be called Jesus who would be given the throne of David his father. The angel Gabriel spoke to Mary in the silence of her heart. Traditional paintings show Mary at prayer when the angel arrives, not in temple or synagogue, but in the protected garden of her parent’s home, an enclosed garden that symbolized her virginity.

Remember, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph inviting him to take Mary as his wife, not in his woodworker’s shop within ear-shot of the gossiping men of his village. The angel appeared to him in the quiet of a sleepy dream where the heavenly message was heard only by this just man.

That is how God works, that is how God invites, that is how God beckons his beloved to deeper union; not in the frenzied activity and drama of our lives, but in the quiet moments when we make time for silence in the middle of the busiest of days; when we finger the rosary beads and mediate on the mysteries of our faith rather than channel-surf through life looking for the most exciting, the most outrageous, the fastest, the best of whatever that can only promise to distract us from the stuff of real living. When the company goes home, when lights are low, when dishes are done, when mountains of wrapping paper are totted to the trash or even saved for another season of gift-giving, in those quiet moments - that is when we should expect our God to speak to us, even as he spoke to Mary in her secluded garden or to Joseph in the privacy of his bed chamber.

On a day feast like Christmas, what we proclaim and sing and herald publicly in song and worship, only has meaning when it emanates from the quiet chamber of our hears, that sacred space where God speaks to us not in words of grandeur but in the silence of love.

So enjoy the chatter of the family gathered around the Christmas table; sing along with the carols you love; play with your sugar-saturated grandchildren and even converse with your craziest uncle. But find time too, when shadows lengthen and lights begin to twinkle, to listen to the silence of this feast. And in that silence hear the voice of your God speaking once again the word that is his son, the son who is your brother, the son who is your friend, the son who is begotten of the father but born in time, our time, the time that is measured in the silent beating of our hearts.