Christmas eve 2017

With deep thanks, I am indebted to the Rev. John Ohmer for his Christmas Eve sermon which I used as inspiration for my own!

I want you to think about the best teacher you ever had.
Maybe it was someone you had in the classroom – maybe it was your beloved grandmother or uncle.  
I say often that parents are the primary Christian educators of their children,
So maybe you were lucky enough to have parents who were wonderful teachers to you.
 
Remember, now, how that teacher made you feel
How excited you were to learn, to grow,
to be trusted with a task and encouraged to take on something new.
What a wonderful glow those memories impart to tonight’s Christmas Eve!
 
My friend John Ohmer, who some of you have met,
Tells a wonderful story about his first and best teacher – his father.
Over his father’s desk hung a sign that said, “Children need models, not critics.”
And John remembers that his father truly lived into that saying –
He tells the story of being in the basement woodshop with his father one weekend.
John was very young, but was trying to help his dad build something.
Now John was doing it all wrong – was cutting the wood with the wrong tool,
Abiding by a measure-once-cut-twice kind of technique that we all know just won’t do.
 
And his father probably sucked in a breath - he had a choice to make:

• He could be completely indifferent – passively stand by, pretend there were no standards, and that a poorly-cut wrong-sized piece of wood was good enough. There are times when this might be the most appropriate course of action, when the child is too young or the project not important.  

• OR John’s father had another choice – he could criticize and belittle John, take the project away from him or scrap it entirely. He could be a harsh critic – as sometimes, even the best of human parents tend to be.

Neither of those are what his father did.
John’s father sucked and breath and remembered – children need models, not critics.
 
And so instead he came alongside of John and said
– Here, let me show you.
Let me show you how I would do it, and how I think it might work for you.
He trusted John, and wanted him to learn and grow.
 
Many, too many children, really,
Grow up with teachers and parents who make one of the first two choices.
And even more adults – far too many! –
live with images of God just like those first two choices.
 
Some believe that God is far-off, indifferent, uncaring.
That’s a God who who creates the world,
Then goes out for cigarettes and never comes back.
 
Other live with an image of a God who is a constant critic –
Demeaning and belittling, always yelling from somewhere up above,
A harsh disciplinarian whose love is taken away for the slightest offense.
 
But isn’t it just like God to choose the third or two options?
Every year Christmas comes along to show us that there is another way,
That our God is neither indifferent nor overly critical,
But a teacher, a model, a parent, who comes alongside us to say, “Here, let me show you.”
“Here, let me show you –
What it looks like to be vulnerable and open.
To live a life of love and of justice –
To live, and eat and drink, to be born of human parents and live in human relationship,
To live and grow… and even to die.
Here, let me show you how I would do it. How I think it might work for you.”
 
God trusts us, and wants us to grown and learn, and so -
God comes alongside us and shows us a new way.
 
That kind of a God, that kind of a leader, teacher, and parent,
Is exactly what God’s children, what the world, most needs.
Not a God who is far-off and inaccessible, hidden away in realms of glory,
Not a God of non-stop thunderbolt and rage –
 
But a God born poor in a little village to an unwed teenage mother
A God who was a refugee at a young age,
And who suffered and and was hurt – but through it all was a man of peace and goodwill,
Offering himself to those around him, healing with his touch and with his presence.
 
Humankind is always getting trapped in these cycles of extremes,
Living only in a binary reality –
Either too permissive or too harsh – or sometimes both at the same time.
And God is constantly showing us that there IS another way.
God is always taking the disruptive action that will upset our calculus,
That will tear down our walls of binary extremes, and make a new path visible.
 
“here, let me show you,” Jesus is always saying,
And he shows us a new way to be and to live.
 
In the person of Jesus Christ, in the incarnation, God says to us “here, let me show you.”
Let me show you the kind of miracle that can illuminate one of the darkest nights of the year,
The kind of love that can conquer death and destruction,
The kind of love worth imitating and learning from.
“Here, let me show you,” God says,
Because God trusts you and wants you to grow.
 
“Here, let me show you,” Jesus is always saying,
Beginning with this night, this night of nights,
When he is born into the world in human flesh.
“here, let me show you,” God says,
Let me show you all the divine goodness hidden away in every human life.
 
Here, let me show you - Tonight in the city of David, still poor and occupied territory, even today.
Yes, even tonight is born to us a child, a Savior –
authority rests upon his shoulders – but he will not use it to demean, coerce, or criticize,
for he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
He is Jesus the Christ, and in him God bids us to come and see,
“Here, let me show you.”