Rev. Julie Stoneberg

Music by The Occasional Singers

Our tradition is to dedicate one service each holiday season to those in need. Please bring mittens/hats/gloves/grocery cards/cash donations which will be given to a local charity.

Religious Exploration: A UU Heritage day, on seeing things from many perspectives. The Spirit Play story is "Whale Music". The Seekers class includes optical illusions!

  

 

Opening Words

Meeting the Messiah       - Jeffrey B.

 

 

 

 

  

STORY FOR ALL AGES

Larabee                         - Kevin Luthardt

This is the story of a dog, Larabee, who happily helps to deliver the mail, but never gets any mail himself.  That is, until one friend, Lacey McNabb, sends him a special letter.

 

READING

from All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten   - Robert Fulghum[1]

A Sunday afternoon it was, some days before Christmas.  With rain, with wind, with cold.  Winters-gloom.  Things-to-do list was long and growing like an unresistant mold.  Temper: Short.  Bio-index: negative.  Horoscope reading suggested caution.  And the Sunday paper suggested dollars, death, and destruction as the day’s litany.  O tidings of comfort and joy, fa la la la la.

This holy hour of Lordsdaybliss was jarred by a pounding at the door.  Now what?  Deep-sigh.  Opening it, resigned to accept whatever bad news lies in wait, I am nonplussed.  A rather small person in a cheap Santa Claus mask, carrying a large brown paper bag outthrust: “TRICK OR TREAT!”  Santa Mask shouts. 
What?  “TRICK OR TREAT!” Santa Mask hoots again.  Tongue-tied, I stare at this apparition.  He shakes the bag at me, and dumbly I fish out my wallet and find a dollar to drop into the bag.  The mask lifts, and it is an Asian kid with a ten-dollar grin taking up most of his face.  “Wanta hear some carolling?” he asks, in singsong English.

I know him now.  He belongs to a family settled into the neighbourhood by the Quakers last year.  Boat people.  Vietnamese, I believe.  Refugees.  He stopped by at Halloween with his sisters and brothers, and I filled their bags.  Hong Duc is his name – he’s maybe eight.  At Halloween he looked like a Wise Man, with a bathrobe on and a dishtowel around his head.

“Wanta hear some carolling?”

I nod, envisioning an octet of urchin refugees hiding in the bushes ready to join their leader in uplifted song.  “Sure, where’s the choir?”

“I’m it,” says he.  And he launched forth with an up-tempo chorus of “Jingle Bells,” at full lung power.  This was followed by an equally enthusiastic rendering of what I swear sounded like “Hark, the Hairy Angels Sing.”  And finally, a soft-voiced, reverential singing of “Silent Night.” Head back, eyes closed, from the bottom of his heart he poured out the last strains of “Sleep in heavenly peace” into the gathering night.

Wet-eyed, dumbstruck by his performance, I pulled a five-dollar bill out of my wallet and dropped that into the paper bag.  In return, he produced half a candy cane from his pocket and passed it solemnly to me.  Flashing the ten-dollar grin, he turned and ran from the porch, shouted “GOD BLESS YOU,” and “TRICK OR TREAT” and was gone.

Who was that masked kid?  Hong Duc, the one-man choir, delivering Christmas door to door.

I confess that I’m usually a little confused about Christmas.  It never has made a lot of sense to me.  It’s unreal.  Ever since I got the word about Santa Claus, I’ve been a closet cynic at heart.  Singing about riding in a one-horse open sleigh is ludicrous.  I’ve never seen one, much less ridden in one.  Never roasted chestnuts by an open fire.  Wouldn’t know how to if I had one, and I hear they’re no big deal anyway.  Wandering Wise Men raise my suspicions, and shepherds who spend their lives hanging about with sheep are a little strange.  Never seen an angel, either, and my experience with virgins is really limited.  The appearance of a newborn king doesn’t interest me; I’d just as soon settle for some other president.  Babies and reindeer stink.  I’ve been around them both, and I know.  The little town of Bethlehem is a pit, according to those who have been there.

Singing about things that I’ve never seen or done or wanted, dreaming of a white Christmas I’ve never known.  Christmas isn’t very real.  And yet, and yet... I’m too old to believe in it, and too young to give up on it.  Too cynical to get into it, and too needy to stay out of it.

Trick or treat!  After I shut the door came near hysteria – laughter and tears and that funny feeling you get when you know that once again Christmas has come to you.  Right down the chimney of my midwinter hovel comes Santa Hong Duc.  His is confused about the details, like me, but he is very clear about the spirit of the season.  It’s an excuse to let go and celebrate – to throw yourself into Holiday with all you have, wherever you are.  “I’m it,” says he.  Where’s Christmas?  I ask myself.  I’m it, comes the echo.  I’m it.  Head back, eyes closed, voice raised in whatever song I can muster the courage to sing.

God, it is said, once sent a child upon a starry night, that the world might know hope and joy.  I am not sure that I quite believe that, or that I believe in all the baggage heaped upon that story during two thousand years.  But I am sure that I believe in Hong Duc, the one-man Christmas choir, shouting “trick or treat!” door to door.  I don’t know who or what sent him.  But I know I am tricked through the whimsical mischief of fate into joining the choir that sings of joy and hope.  Through a child, I have been treated to Christmas. 

MESSAGE

Delivering Christmas.  Are you wondering why bother?  Why deliver Christmas?  Why celebrate Christmas here at all...here in this community of liberal religious thinkers... here in this place to which many have turned as an alternative to more traditional churches?  Do you shake your head, a bit bemused and even bit disdainful, and say, “Ahh, it’s December, the time of year when Unitarian Universalists become Christians!”

Why is it that we celebrate Christmas here?  If we are not waiting for, and then celebrating, the birth of a saviour, what does this season mean to us? 

This may surprise you, but Christmas is sort of OUR holiday.  Unitarians and Universalists have played a historically important role in Christmas on this continent and elsewhere.  Charles Dickens was a Unitarian.  Two Unitarians are credited with bringing the tradition of the Christmas tree to the United States.  Christmas songs such as It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, Do You Hear What I Hear, not to mention Let Christmas Come...were all written by Unitarians.  Even Jingle Bells was written by a Unitarian church music director (although I’m not sure I always appreciate this particular contribution!)

In Stephen Nissenbaum’s book, The Battle for Christmas, he explains that in the early years of European settlement, the Puritans forbade the celebration of Christmas, as it was a festival on the fringes of society, with excessive gorging and drinking, bawdy songs and lascivious behaviour.[2]  He writes that “with the turn of the 19^th century, the re-appropriation of Christmas took on a concerted form – a move to hold services on December 25.  In the forefront of [those leading the movement] were the Universalists...they celebrated it in the hope that their own observances might help to purge the holiday of its associations with seasonal excess and disorder.”

Seasonal excess and disorder...sound familiar?  Over two hundred years ago, Universalists made a conscious choice to celebrate what mattered to them over and against popular culture and practices that ran against their values.   I’m here to tell you today that the very same choice is available to us, and not only at Christmas.   I’ll come back to that. 

But why celebrate Christmas?  This may also surprise you, but the Christmas story is one that deeply and beautifully expresses our theology.  Our theology is one of incarnation; our faith begins with our being human, and with the deeply seated understanding that what is divine enters the world through us, and through the work of our hands and our hearts. 

Before I go on, and just in case anyone is going to get hung up on words like “divine” and “god”, can you, just for these few minutes, give me permission to use such words with this working of definition?  Theologian Frederick Buechner has suggested that if we cannot believe in God as a noun, maybe we can believe in God as a verb.[3]   It is this belief in verbs that we express in our chalice lighting words each week...the verbs to heal, to help, to bless, to serve.   That’s the god, the divine, of which I speak, okay? 

The spirit, life itself, dresses up in human form, so that it might be able to be a verb...to act, to be understood, and to shine in us.  And this is the Christmas story...spirit entering the body, God becoming human, taking the form of a child...reminding us that the divine resides in each child that is born, and therefore in me and in you.  The Christmas story tells us that we all have the potential, in return and in gratitude, to bring that divinity, that loving action, out into the world.  That’s our job.

Some would insist that this work is left to only a few...the saints, the angels, the enlightened.  You may remember that last year I did a sermon that was inspired by Rachel Naomi Remen's bestseller, My Grandfather's Blessing. In that book, she tells the story of when she first learned of the Lamed-Vov, or the Just Men, a story from Hasidic literature.  Speaking of her grandfather she writes[5]:

“The story he told me is very old and dates from the time of the prophet Isaiah...In this story, God tells us that He will allow the world to continue as long as at any given time there is a minimum of thirty-six good people in the human race...people who are capable of responding to the suffering that is part of the human condition. These thirty-six are called the Lamed-Vov....

Do you know who these people are, Grandpa?" I asked, certain that he would say "Yes."   But he shook his head. "No, Neshume-le," he told me. "Only God knows who the Lamed-Vovniks are.  Even the Lamed-Vovniks themselves do not know for sure the role they have in the continuation of the world, and no one else knows it either.  They respond to suffering, not in order to save the world but simply because the suffering of others touches them and matters to them.... And because no one knows who they are, Neshume-le, anyone you meet might be one of the thirty-six for whom God preserves the world," my grandfather said, "[so] it is important to treat everyone as if this might be so."

I sat and thought about this story for a long time.  It was different than Noah's Ark [where] the rainbow meant that there would be a happily-ever-after... [This] story made no such promises.  God [was asking] something of people in return for the gift of life, and He was asking it still.

Suddenly, I realized I had no idea what it was.  If so much depended on it, it must be something very hard, something that required a great sacrifice. What if the Lamed-Vovniks could not do it? What then? "How do the Lamed-Vovniks respond to suffering, Grandpa?" I asked, suddenly anxious. "What do they have to do?"  My grandfather smiled at me very tenderly. "Ah Neshume-le," he told me, "they do not have to do anything. They respond to all suffering with compassion.  Without compassion the world cannot continue. Our compassion blesses and sustains the world.”[6]

It’s a beautiful story.  And while this story implies that awareness of the presence of Lamed-vovniks would encourage all of us to be more compassionate, it also could be interpreted to mean that the work of compassion is left to only a few...the saints, the angels, the enlightened, the 36 lamed-vovniks.  But I disagree.  I firmly disagree.  I believe that we each are saints and angels and enlightened, if only for a small percentage of the time.  We are all the lamed-vov...and the survival of the world depends on us. 

So what does this have to do with ‘delivering Christmas’?  Well, my talk today was inspired by the Robert Fulghum reading that Ric shared earlier, and particularly by the lines “Who was that masked kid?  Hong Duc, the one-man choir, delivering Christmas door to door.”  Delivering Christmas by showing up in the imperfect wholeness of who he was, mixing and matching holidays in the spirit of neighbourliness and joy. 

You see, Fulghum’s is not a story about bringing presents, or festivity, or even carols.  It’s not a story about feeling all fuzzy, or about decorating greens with gifts of mittens and hats and grocery cards, although there is certainly something of the spirit of the season in this.  It’s more than that.  This is about how Christmas...the message of hope and possibility and connection and transformation...exists in the surprising ways in which we engage and relate with one another in all of our messiness.  And it’s about how transformation requires at least two... one to open the door, and one to deliver the message. 

Sometimes I think, in the busyness of our lives and particularly in the busyness of this season, we choose to enter into the space of Advent...a time of waiting behind closed doors...a time when we pray and sing that Christmas, with its hope and joy, will visit us.  If we’re so blessed, we find the time to look inward and to reflect on how we might open ourselves to the spirit of Christmas.  This is the part where we open the door...the part where we intentionally prepare ourselves to receive.

But what I want to remind us all today is that there must also be those who come knocking at the door, who make the delivery, and that this is also our task.  In our story today, Larabee the dog was an avid deliverer...happy to go about his work though he felt a particular one-sided-ness about it.  When would a letter ever come to him?  Hoping for it, waiting for it, didn’t make it happen.  It took someone else, just one someone else, Lacey McNabb, to notice, to act, and to make a special effort to deliver a letter to Larabee.   Just as it took only one unlikely someone, in a Santa mask and armed with carols, to deliver Christmas to a bah-humbug Fulghum.

Are you prepared to deliver Christmas?  Are you up for being an angel or a lamed-vov?  No?  Well, fear not, you need not be a saint or an angel to deliver Christmas.  David Roche wrote a book called “The Church of Eighty Percent Sincerity,” which is addressed to recovering perfectionists.  What I love about his perspective is that, at best, we can be 80% sincere...or good, or compassionate, or divine...100% of the time, or 100% sincere...or good, or compassionate, or divine...about 80% of the time.  It’s unreasonable, maybe even unhealthy, to expect more than that, especially if it gets in the way of us being the best god, the best verb, that we can be.  We need to simply accept that we can do the best we can as often as we can, but that none of us is perfect.  There’s a crack in every single one of us.

I’m pretty partial to the Leonard Cohen song “Anthem” in which he sings:

But don’t forget that having cracks is also how the light that is within gets out.   In our moments of frustration, of pain, of sorrow, of despair, of anxiety, of fear...there is still a light in us.   The story of Christmas...the story of Chanukah, of Diwali, of Kwanzaa...is that from the darkness, something sacred is born.  When it seems the light has left forever, it returns, and we see that the world begins again every day in an ever new light.   And we are reborn, in every moment, with renewed possibility and hope, and it is our job to take that creative action out into the world. 

I know that there are many in this community who are grieving today the loss of a friend.  When death comes, particularly when it is sudden and untimely and so unfair, it’s pretty difficult to think about delivering Christmas....pretty difficult to see the light that shines within.  But what matters is that we continually choose to respond out of that light, that sense of Christmas within, however dim...and that we respond in gratitude for life itself.  In such times, we can still ‘deliver Christmas’, even out of our pain and sorrow, because Christmas is about the magic that happens between us as we give and receive. 

And so when Christmas is not what we ordered, when our holidays are not what we had hoped for, when we grow frustrated with seasonal excess and disorder, rather than only calling out for the spirit to come, we must also remember that ‘delivering Christmas’ is up to us.  Just as the 19^th century Universalists decided to re-create Christmas so that it aligned with their values, so must we. 

UU Minister Brent Smith had the opportunity to attend a lecture given by Martin Marty where he gave witness to his travels across the country "looking for angelic acts in the everyday."  He asked Marty about angelic appearances in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and how it is that such appearances are almost always followed by some version of, "Fear not."  You know how it goes, particularly in the most famous of these, when the angel says, “Fear not, for I bring you tidings of great joy which shall be for all people.” Marty responded with his belief that in these times, these existential times, people need to hear these words, “fear not,” in every worship service.  To my point today, we need to be reminded that these are the words that can best help us to deliver Christmas.  Fear not, because there is a light that shines in the darkness.  Fear not, take courage, there is a light in you that shines for all people.

And so I close with the words which Rev. Smith now regularly uses in benediction:

Fear not.  Wear a Santa mask, put on your angel suit, bring gifts of warmth and compassion into the world, offer a carol...or your hand or your ear.  Let your light shine and deliver the message of Christmas year round.  Rejoice always in the work of compassion and the power of spirit. 

That’s our job. 

Amen. 

 

CLOSING WORDS

(excerpts)                               - M. Maureen Killoran            

You are a source of light in a world too long believing in the dark.  Go, and be that light.  Amen.