“Nothing But a Child” based on Luke 2:1-20 Christmas Eve Humber United Church

Waiting for Christmas.  Especially as children, throughout December, it seemed like nothing but  just waiting for Christmas. Waiting is a hard thing to do when you’re a child - well, hard for all of us. Waiting has a strange dynamic. The more you wait the longer time stretches. It’s like when your eyes are glued to the clock, time just won’t pass - or you stand drumming your fingers, waiting for the kettle to boil.

Waiting is not one of our cultural virtues. We want what we want and want it now.  No money? No problem. Charge it. Who saves for something they want any more? Have you ever done this? I have - picking up two cheeseburgers and fries at one of those fast-food places, trying to eat while driving, steering the car with my knees. Yet we know, that getting food fast and eating fast is actually not good for our health. The process of waiting for food includes sitting down at a table, studying the menu, smelling the food. One of the things I love most about being in Portugal and Spain is that every place has olives and bread on the table to nibble on, and engage in conversation, waiting for the meal to come. Waiting - good for your health.

Would Christmas be half as much fun if we just skipped all of Advent? Would we take any time to pause and do some reflection about the meaning of Christmas? Jesuit priest William Lynch says there are two kinds of waiting: first, the “nothing else to do” kind, where the world thinks it is up to God to make a move now.  People go through each day doing ordinary things while worrying about the future - and this is the place where we find despair, helplessness, and confusion - and we get the people who pick up on something as obscure as a round stone that the Mayans used as a calendar, that stops at December 21, 2012 - and right away we think it means the world is coming to a literal end.

It's like throwing up your arms and saying, everything's so corrupt that we just have to wait for the tide to turn. "We keep on waiting for the world to change."  It almost sounds like an appeal to a higher source, a prayer to God for help.

Wait a minute...God already did help....that’s why we are here tonight. An angel appeared and said  "I'm here to announce a great and joyful event that is meant for everybody, worldwide: A baby has just been born in David's home town, a Savior who is Messiah."

The Messiah has already come, and continues to come.  God's peace and goodwill has  been declared to the world. This is not a message of passive waiting for God just to wave a wand and everything will come right. This is the second kind of waiting.

The second  kind of waiting is based on expectation.. It's an active waiting, like preparing for visitors who are already on the way to see us. The house needs to be cleaned, food needs to be prepared. What we're waiting for is imminent, in that it’s just about to happen -  but also immanent, already here in part.

Tonight we hear Oliver sing  "O Holy Night", written by French poet Placide Cappeau in 1847:

    Truly he taught us to love one another, his law is love and his gospel is peace.
    Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother, and in his name all oppression shall cease.
    
Amazing - written one year before the French abolition of slavery, and the American Emancipation Declaration by almost 16 years. Cappeau had an expectant kind of waiting, and an active waiting. God was actively at work in the world for the full realization of the coming realm, and it was to come in the birth of a child. Nothing but a child..

Not everybody sees the magnitude of what Cappeau saw. We’ve made Christmas about being busy, partly so the waiting will go faster, partly because our culture tells us we have to, but the “busy” often wears us out. We miss the best part; taking part in this birth.

In this story from Luke, the world is invited to reflect on the birth through the eyes of faith. God is pushing us to look, to see the miracle, the hope tied up in a child. Nothing but a child - and yet in a child, the hopes and fears of all the years are met. In the birth of every baby, Jesus is born again, and in the birth of Jesus, the hopes and the fears of all our years are met with faith.

“Nothing but a child could wash these tears away, or guide a weary world into the light of day.  Nothing but a child could help erase these miles so once again we all can be children for awhile.

Now all around the world, in every little town, everyday is heard a precious little sound.  Every mother kind and every father proud looks down in awe, to find another chance allowed.”

A small town, a young girl and a man, a baby - a gaggle of ragged toothless shepherds - and a choir of angels of every kind singing - the hopes and fears of all the years, are met - in nothing but a child. Nothing but a child, and yet everything wrapped up *in* this child, in every child. What an incredible gift to the world!



Sources:
1) Waiting on the World to Change, by Rev. Frank Schaefer, based on LKuke 2:6-12
2) "Images of Hope: Imagination as Healer of the Hopeless'' William F. Lynch, 1966
3) "O Holy Night" music by Adolphe Adam in 1847 to the French poem "Minuit, Chrétiens" by Placide Cappeau