Tending to the Crying Christ Child

Christmas Eve B  December 24, 2020                                                                          Isaiah 9:2-7 Psalm 96                                                                                               Titus 2:11-14  Luke 2:1-14

Lectionary Link

It's Christmas again!  So that means Christmas bears repeating.  But Jesus was only born once, just like us.  One birth.  We have birthdays.  And Jesus has a birthday.  He has had many birthdays observed and celebrated since he left this earth.

The birthday of Jesus has been kept alive for a long time.  Why?  Because a power of change entered the world in his life.  And we want to to go back to the place where there is the possibility for the power for change and rebirth.

At Christmas, we don't celebrate Jesus as a two thousand year old man in heaven with a white beard; we prefer Jesus the baby.  We all know that a baby is much more interesting and mysterious and holds power over us because we can't remember when we were babies.

Lest we over-romanticize babies, we need to remember that babies cry.  And tonight we probably need to know that the baby Christ Child cries.  Tonight the Christ Child is born into a world which would make him cry.  Crying about the untimely loss of so many people from the pandemic.  Crying that many people are evicted from the inn of no-vacancy and forced into homeless hovels.  Crying that tyrants of greed still lie and control most of the assets of world.

A baby cries often for what we do not know.  We as adults, can add knowledge for what is worth crying for in our lives.  The loss of lives, dear friends, and family members, loss of jobs and homes.  Loss of the freedom to gather to spark community effervescence.  The loss of the freedom to hug, kiss and shake hands.  The loss of the freedom to eat in public, to sing, and dance, and play and learn in the public ways that we once knew.

Tonight the harsh realities of our adult worlds informs and gives reason for the crying Christ child in the manger of our world tonight.

There is the truth of Charles Dickens: it is the worst of times, it is the best of times.  But in our lives now it is the worst of times which has created what is best in our lives now.  And what is best?  The best is when a mom or dad calms a crying baby.  Our best include the people who are dealing face to face with the worst: Our hospital workers, EMT workers, essential workers, fire fighters, police and Armed Forces.

And since the best of our time are those who are working sacrificially for our health and survival, we too should come to the manger of Christ, and ask, "How can I help when things seem to be the worst?  What can I do to be a minister of what is best,  what is good news, what is Gospel for the world right now?

Tonight you and I need to tend to the crying Christ Child.  This is how we bring our gold, frankincense and myrrh best gifts to Jesus tonight.  We can tend to the crying Christ Child who is dispersed throughout the collective pain of our world tonight.  We may be called to do it in health danger situations, or we may be called to do it in things, not heroic at all:  by washing our hands, wearing a mask, reaching out by phone to the lonely who are sheltering in place, shopping locally to keep a merchant alive.

We are called to create the best of time in the worst of time, and do you know we call that?  It's Gospel.  It is good news being brought to people who need it, and it comes in word and deed, love and justice.

Having been a parent of babies, I often realized that I could not always stop my babies from crying even after going through a check list of care responses.

And what do we do when the crying baby of the worst of times, continues to cry?  We stay.  We don't abandon.  We don't give up on those who suffer.  Life tells us that we cannot always solve in quick order the causes of crying, but we keep trying?

Why? because we want the child to be in the state of mind to enjoy the gifts we want to give them. 

So, on this Christmas, as we endure the crying time of the Christ Child in the conditions of hurt in our world, we hope that the crying hurt of the world will fall asleep, so that all of us can begin afresh in a new day of general health for the lives of people in our world.

I apologize for a different kind of Christmas sermon but a parent never does regret staying with a crying baby.  And that is our Christmas attitude for tonight.

Christ is born; and he is crying.  And tonight we are called to comfort the ones in whom he is crying, even when we don't have immediate soothing effect.  And the Christ in you is reaching out to the Christ in me as we let the Christ in us reach out to the crying Christ in our world tonight.

And we whisper to the crying babe in our world tonight.  Merry Christmas, we will stay with you, because Christ has stayed with us.  Amen.