The Singing of Angels

Sermon

Merry Christmas! Today, we celebrate Emmanuel: God with us. Medieval mystic Meister Eckhart wrote that “We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born.” Maybe that is the best explanation of why we celebrate, every year, the birth of Jesus, God with us (again!). God is always needing to be born.

Today’s scripture about the singing angels surprising those shepherds in the middle of the night captures our imagination! Amazement inspired the shepherds to share with others. Their ordinary lives were suddenly transformed. We, too, sometimes have moments of wonder. Wonder can open our hearts and help us to live more fully, with more trust in God. When have you experienced wonder? How did that change you? Today, I’m going to share some slides from a few Christmases past. I hope they will help you remember your own times of wonder and feeling loved.

Here is my family—Mom, Dad, brother Lance, and me—in our white Volvo, traveling from where we lived in East Tennessee to Texas and Oklahoma, where grandparents lived. It’s dark. Dad is driving in freezing rain. It’s a slow and harrowing drive. We are now in West Memphis. Many places were closed, due to the weather. Finally, we found an open place. (I’m told by my parents that this was a run-down Mexican restaurant, but it was all we had.) We walked in. Part of the floor was a dirt floor. There was a stuffed bull in the corner. When Mom and I went into the restroom, there was a light fixture that looked like a star. To my young eyes, the dirt floor, the animal, and the star all added up to one thing.

I said, with awe: “It’s the star of Bethlehem!” Children are great at seeing the wonder. Especially at Christmas. Sometimes we experience God in the most unexpected places.

Here’s another slide. This is a Christmas Eve/morning that happened about ten years later in Erwin, Tennessee. We have just finished singing “Silent Night” at a midnight Christmas Eve candlelight service. Mom and the choir had sung “O Holy Night.” Everything about the service was magical and wondrous. But the biggest surprise for me was Mark. Mark was two years older than me, and I knew him from the church youth group. In addition to youth events, sometimes he gave me a ride home from the high-school basketball games. He was very funny. I had a huge crush on him. What you are seeing here is the moment he gave me a Christmas gift. I wasn’t expecting anything from him, even though I had made and delivered cookies to him earlier in the week. I opened the small gift, and to my delight, was a delicate necklace with two little hearts. I doubt anyone else on the planet was filled with the singing of angels more than I was in that moment.

Playwright and novelist Charles Morgan said, “There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved. It is God’s finger on man’s shoulder.”

Here is a Christmas many years later. In fact, it was a few years ago, when I was home between our two Westminster Christmas Eve services. I was preparing to host the next day’s Christmas dinner for friends. I was getting a head start on the shaved Brussels sprouts salad. While I was preparing the food, outside, the freezing rain was making roads treacherous.

I made the mistake of using a brand-new mandolin slicer (which came without instructions). Without going into detail, let’s just say my finger got in the way, and it was clear I needed medical attention. The roads were too icy for my teenage sons to drive me (as new drivers). Alex called our neighbor, who happens to be a doctor. She gave advice about stanching the wound and then said that her husband would give us a ride to Emmanuel Hospital. (This was interrupting their Christmas Eve dinner, but Carter did help us with no hesitation.) Here we are, sitting in the ER. After getting a couple of stitches, all I could feel was gratitude for the love of friends who go out of their way to help. The singing of angels.

In this slide, there are seven of us from Westminster singing Christmas carols to folks not able to get to church. We’ve come to sing to Gerrit and Alberta. The six singers from the youth group and I are welcomed into their tiny apartment, and it is a space filled with the feeling of love. There are many quilts, made by Alberta, for children who are experiencing loss. The patterns and colors fill the room. There is also an amazing art collection of Gerrit’s. This couple, in their nineties, appear younger than they are. They are still in love, after many, many years of marriage. They hold hands and laugh together. Gerrit is near the end of his life. We sing carols, with Alberta singing along. Gerrit is smiling, but it is bittersweet. As we are prepare to leave, Alberta quietly hands me a small statue: a sculpture of a loving couple and child. She wants me to have something of Gerrit to remember him by. We walk away from their home in silence for a while. There was a feeling of tangible love that they shared with us. We let it sink in. The singing of angels.

Here is another church scene, from Southminster in Beaverton. Every year, the church invites people to donate items: toys, art, jewelry, clothing. The children of the community are invited in to “shop” for Christmas gifts for their loved ones. There is no cost for the item they choose. And there are always several adults helping kids to select the gift they want to give. In this photo, you see eight-year-old Dan with an ear-to-ear grin. He’s chosen a necklace with pearls for his mother. What better illustration could we ever see than this look-alike of Opie from the Andy Griffith show, freckles and all smiles, to understand that it is more blessed to give than to receive. He knows it. He is feeling love and expressing it. The singing of angels.

The glory of Christmas is really too bright for us to see and too big for us to understand. But soul-friends can help us recognize the signs of God with us. Today, and every day, as a community of faith, we help recognize God born anew. I’m closing with these words, by Howard Thurman, African American theologian and civil rights leader:

“There must be always remaining in every [person’s] life some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathlessly beautiful and by an inherent prerogative, throwing all the rest of life into a new and creative relatedness, something that gathers up in itself all the freshets of experience from drab and commonplace areas of living and glows in one bright light of penetrating beauty and meaning—then passes. The commonplace is shot through with new glory; old burdens become lighter, deep and ancient wounds lose much of their old, old hurting. A crown is placed over our heads that for the rest of our lives we are trying to grow tall enough to wear. Despite all the crassness of life, despite all the hardness of life, despite all of the harsh discords of life, life is saved by the singing of angels.”