The Gift of Love - Christmas Eve

About 15 minutes into the beginning of our Winter Solstice worship service I noticed a man and a woman I didn’t recognize standing outside the sanctuary looking in. I worried that they were hesitating to come in because we’d already started so I decided to go out to greet them and make sure they knew they were welcome to join in the service.

When I approached them the man told me that he and the woman were homeless and living in their van. They needed showers and money for gas and food. I gave them $10.00 and invited them to join us for worship. The woman went out to park the van and I returned to worship, assuming they would just leave. I noticed later that they had indeed come into the sanctuary and were sitting in the back of the room.

As I was sitting through the rest of the service I kept thinking of this couple. I wondered how the words we were speaking of God’s promise born in Jesus, of the assurance that God never forsakes or abandons us and that nothing can separate us from the love of God were sounding to these two people who were clearly in a very difficult time of their lives. Did these words sound like the empty promises of a God who had long ago left them, forsaken and alone, to beg for food, to live in their van, to be lost and forgotten by society? Was there any comfort for this couple at all in these words and in the actions of worship? Beyond their current crisis, could they hear the words of God coming to them, words of promise and provision, words of love and hope? Could they see past our wealth, our discomfort with their presence, our shortcomings as Christ’s disciples to notice God reaching out to them in spite of us and in their time of greatest need?

Then I began to wonder what I should do when the service was over – would they just leave, would they hang around, what should I do next? I had already given them some money but should I offer to put them in a hotel for the night so they could get showers? Should I go with them to get some groceries or fill their van with gas? These were certainly possibilities, but, then my discomfort with getting personally involved kicked in – who knows where those efforts would have led. Besides, all of those efforts would have only been a small drop in the bucket compared to their need. I wouldn’t have been able to get them jobs or help them with any other issues that were contributing to their current circumstance.

In the end, I’m ashamed to admit, I tried to ignore them. I hoped they’d go away. I worried that they’d steal from us or that I’d have to call the police to get them to leave. I felt really guilty about these thoughts and feelings – it’s the week of Christmas how could I be so selfish, so callous?

After worship the couple hung around in the Shalom room for a while. They asked if they could take some of the food from the food pantry donation area and I assured them they could have whatever they could use. Eventually, they left.

As the night wore on I started to pray that God would use this experience, my feelings of shame and guilt and helplessness and frustration to soften my heart in some way, to transform me and any of the others who had noticed this couple in our midst and had struggled to know what to do. I prayed that our Christmas story would actually mean something and guide me and others to a different, more loving, more compassionate way of being in the world as Christ’s disciples. And I gave thanks that God somehow manages to love us all and to work God’s justice in the world despite our bumbling efforts to love and care for and to seek justice for one another.

When the nation of Israel was at a low point in her history – facing threats from the Assyrian empire in the north and the Babylonian empire in the south and dealing with the people’s lack of faithfulness to God and to the covenant the prophet Isaiah offered hope saying; “Then a shoot will sprout from the stump of Jesse;” Jesse was the great king David’s father and prophets believed that the next great ruler of Israel would come from David’s lineage.

Isaiah continues, “from Jesse’s roots, a branch will blossom: The Spirit of YHWH will rest on you – a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and strength, a spirit of knowledge and reverence for YHWH. You will delight in obeying YHWH, and you won’t judge by appearances, or make decisions by hearsay. You will treat poor people with fairness and will uphold the rights of the land’s downtrodden.” (11:1-4a)

These words of hope from Isaiah remind us that no matter how bad it is, no matter how much we lose, no matter how broken our world becomes, no matter how unfair and unjust our systems and institutions are, no matter what Jesse’s roots, Israel’s roots, our roots are planted solidly in God’s love and we will never be lost, forsaken by God or left alone.

Even in the midst of all of that is wrong, all that is broken and wounded and unjust there is hope because Isaiah tells us that from the roots a branch will blossom – even in the cold of winter, even in the middle of the night, even when the world is dark and so much seems lost.

The love of God, which comes to us on this night as a helpless infant in a poor and lonely place, this love matters and it can change our lives and change the world. God with us, God incarnate comes to us in human form in an attempt to communicate once again the depth, breadth, width and height of God’s love – the lengths God will go to reach out to us, to meet us wherever we are in life. This love has the power to do anything – even upset the systems and powers that keep so many poor and on the edge while so many others wallow in excess.

The transformation that God’s love brings is mostly imperceptible and mostly happens in small ways as hearts are touched and tiny victories for justice and peace are won. When we see an injustice we’ve previously ignored, God’s love is transforming our lives. When we take action to right a wrong, God’s love is transforming our lives. When we reach out to a person in need with compassion and caring, God’s love is transforming our lives. When we look a panhandler in the eye and say hello even if we give them nothing else, God’s love is transforming our lives. When we take the time to listen to someone’s painful story but don’t try to fix it or make it better, God’s love is transforming our lives. When we observe behavior that we believe to be contrary to God’s will for us and we find ways to change that behavior, God’s love is transforming our lives. When we hold leaders and elected officials accountable for the common good and organize ourselves as citizens to push for greater justice in the world, God’s love is transforming our lives.
We can’t fix all of the huge and overwhelming problems of our society. We can barely make a drop in the bucket by ourselves. But we can, as Mother Theresa said, do small things with great love. And we can have faith that God’s love is present and active radically impacting the world for good independent of our bumbling efforts to love and care for one another.

On this Christmas Eve we recall the story of the birth of our savior, the advent of God’s deep and abiding love in Jesus, and the hope that this love does indeed bring peace to the world. On this Christmas Eve we remember God’s promises that Jesus’ coming brings justice for the poor and the outcast, the hungry and the lame and hope for the healing and transformation of the systems and powers of our broken world. And we pray that God’s love is our guide when we encounter sisters and brothers who are homeless or desperate, so that we might respond to them with compassion by seeing the human being, by engaging the person whose needs we may or may not be able to meet but who deserves to be treated with dignity and respect and not wished away or ignored. On this Christmas Eve, let us pray that Jesus will abide in us as together we do what we can to make this world a little less hostile and a little more humane, a little less unjust and a lot more compassionate if only for a few moments.

And I give thanks that just as we affirm God’s love for ourselves and our families, we also affirm God’s deep and abiding love for the couple who came to this place on Monday night seeking relief and for all the people of the world like them who are hungry, without a home, living in fear, celebrating Christmas in a war zone, or waking up not sure how they will make it through another day. For even in the midst of the cold and dark of winter, the half-spent night, the fear, desolation, injustice, and sorrow or perhaps most especially in the midst of these things a rose is blooming, Jesus is born, God’s love has come and is coming, born of Mary, a ray of light for all to see and this is indeed Good News. Amen.