At 60, I don't get many boxed presents, but I do try to be more conscious than ever of gifts that come to me every day. So I'm doing a countdown of gifts I've enjoyed this Christmas.
[Photo collage: Christmas morning in and around St. James Episcopal Church. Marietta's streets were nearly empty after the service.]
This year, one such gift this Christmas was the Episcopal Church itself, its liturgy and music. In late morning on Christmas Eve, I heard the 100th Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's College, Cambridge, broadcast live in America for the 40th time -- though I've heard only the most recent 39 broadcasts. Then I completed my 3000th mile of the year on my bike (see previous post).
I spent many of the following 20 hours in church, where another gift was a three-pack of sermons. Literally preaching to the choir for the final two services of four on Christmas Eve, Fr. Roger generously prepares a different sermon for each one -- perhaps so that singers won't nod off behind him during a rerun. Then, with his assistant Fr. Daron Vroon being down with flu, Fr. Roger preached again Christmas morning.
At the 8pm service, Fr. Roger told us how cute the children's service had been with a flock of little shepherds, angels, animals of all kinds, and a real baby in the manger. But shepherds never were cute, Fr. Roger said. Presumed to be thieves and rogues who skimmed their employer's flock and grazed neighbors' land, shepherds were "unclean -- both literally and ritually." Nor should we imagine angels as greeting cards do, as chubby little cherubs or statuesque winged ladies with benign faces. Fr. Roger quoted Scripture after Scripture to demonstrate that angels are always terrifying the humans who encounter them, alien and warlike.
So the angel's greeting "Be not afraid" has even more impact spoken to social outcasts who had every reason to be terrified. If the angels honor these lowliest of men with their Christmas blessing, we, too, can take heart. Then, the gospel tells us that the shepherds leave the manger eager to tell others what they saw. Fr. Roger concluded with a question, "Will you go out from here to tell what you have experienced?"
At the midnight service, Fr. Roger used the Sears catalogue to remind us how much we wanted things when we were little. What do we want, now? Fr. Roger suggested that, as we outgrow the desires of youth and the needs of early adulthood, we can look to Scripture as our new "wishbook."
[Photo: A page from the Sears catalog of 1965. I did receive that record player, or one very similar to it, on which I played the LP to Mary Poppins over and over and over - along with Alvin and the Chipmunks Sing the Beatles' Greatest Hits. No wonder my parents made me keep the record player in the basement.]
Christmas Day, Fr. Roger spoke to around fifty people about the crowded services of the night before. We might feel that all the preparations had led up to the day, and now it was all in the past. He relayed a conversation that a fellow priest had with a young man who "got" the story of baby Jesus and the manger, but who couldn't feel any connection between that and the church. So, it happened 2000 years ago; so what?
Fr. Roger looked back over the scriptures that we'd just heard read aloud to us, observing that readings appointed for Christmas day are far removed from the baby in a manger. Isaiah anticipates the restoration of Jerusalem, "and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God." Psalm 98 hails the coming of "the King, the Lord" who will "judge the world...with equity." The author of Hebrews writes how God's Son, "having made purification for sins... sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high." The gospel reading was one that concluded every Sunday service in Advent, John 1.1-14, verses that place the birth of Jesus in a cosmic context: the Word that created everything that is "became flesh and dwelt among us." Fr. Roger admits that life seems to go on as it always has, with all the things that bother us in the daily news, but the day's readings are, together, an answer to that young man's question, "So what?"
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