Don't Worship the Messengers

This sermon was at Mystic Congregational Church, UCC, in Mystic, Connecticut.

A reading from the the book of Isaiah, chapter 63, verses 7 through 9. Let’s listen for God’s Word.

I will recount the gracious deeds of the LORD, the praiseworthy acts of the LORD, because of all that the LORD has done for us, and the great favor to the house of Israel that he has shown them according to his mercy, according to the abundance of his steadfast love. For he said, “Surely they are my people, children who will not deal falsely”; and he became their savior in all their distress. It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. (NRSV)

The word of the Lord.

Let’s pray.

O God our loving Creator, you whose hands shaped the world, but who humbled yourself as a swaddling baby on Christmas morning, bless our reflection on your word this morning, so that your Spirit may help us draw closer to you. In the name of the holy infant child, Jesus, we pray, Amen.

Christmas is over. For most of us, the hard part—the frantic shopping, decorating, baking, cooking, entertaining—is over, or winding down, and what a miraculous relief. As the holiday decorations come down and Santa vacates the malls, we can take a deep breath and relax. Knowing that I will get a ten-month break from hearing “The Little Drummer Boy” is a cause for a small personal celebration.

But as we look back to Bethlehem, the day after Christmas was not a relief for Joseph and Mary. Impoverished newlyweds, stranded far from their hometown in a barn, snuggling a newborn baby. The halos in the paintings show a strong, cool and collected holy family, but if we accept that baby Jesus had enough humanity in him to shiver, kick, and cry like any other infant, perhaps we can imagine Joseph and Mary as giddy, as terrified as any other new parents. When all the shepherds and wisemen leave, they are alone, fleeing Israel carrying a helpless baby whose tiny hands may have once fashioned the world and whose grown hands would bear the sins of the world.

Christmas day is not the end of the story; it is a birthday, and therefore the beginning of a lifelong journey. Throughout the Christmas season, we sing triumphant songs about stars shining and choirs of angels, but after Christmas, the manger is empty, the star faded, and the angels withdrew quietly back to heaven. It would be profoundly mistaken, however, to think Christmas’s promise was anticlimatic.

When a loving God looked upon humanity’s suffering, upon our “distress,” the prophet Isaiah tells us that God “became our saviour.” I want to look carefully at his next point. We have been taught, “Don’t shoot the messenger.” Those who bring us bad news are not at fault. And the logic is sound. So sound that the prophet Isaiah gives us the logical inverse of that advice. Don’t worship the messengers either.

As loudly and frequently as we remember the visit of Gabriel or the shepherds whose watch was interrupted by heavenly hosts, those were not the most sacred moments in the Christmas story. “It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them.” A visit from an angel can be powerful and memorable, sure, but it does not save anyone. The presence of God does. And, thus the baby in his mother’s arm was a far holier moment than all that preceded it.

And that is the hope and good news the angels proclaimed. That God is with us, has humbled himself to be as the least among us, a newborn baby in a lowly family in an oppressed land, so that, in Isaiah’s words “through his love and pity [he may] redeem” us.

This all reminds me of my favourite Hebrew literary device, and don’t we all have one, the merismus. A merismus is an artistic way to say “everything” or “all” by pairing opposites. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” for example, as a way to express that God created everything in between—the oceans, the mountains. Jesus does this too, when he calls himself the “alpha and omega,” the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. He’s everything in between—beta, gamma, psi. I think God often teaches us this way, by choosing opposite examples. The miraculous birth of the Christ child was announced to lowly shepherds and noble wisemen alike, because his birth is miraculous for all.

When we think of God’s presence in our lives, most us probably have felt the warmth and stillness of God’s love most clearly in the extreme moments of life—the happiness of a newborn baby or the agony of a tragic death. That should not lead us to believe God only dwells with us in the extreme moments, the Christmases and Good Fridays, but that God’s presence can save us in all the ordinary times in between. Yesterday we rejoiced in the miraculous birth of Christ, but we shouldn’t rejoice in angelic choirs only to abandon Joseph and Mary in the next few days. Now is the time to rejoice not in Christ’s arrival, but in his presence. Merry day-after-Christmas, and may the God who arrived among us remain with us all. Amen.