| Rector’s
Sermon
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| Let me tell you three stories tonight. One of them is a story about me. One is the story of an amazing Christmas Eve sixty years ago. And one of them is Jesus’ story. They’re all miracle stories, or at least they might be interpreted that way. I’ll let you decide. Every year about this time, December 20 to be exact, I am reminded by my wife, Bev, that it’s the anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. She reminds me of that with an inevitable and much appreciated anniversary present because I’m always focusing on Christmas and everything else that distracts us this time of year. In any event it serves to remind me that this Christmas Eve Eucharist is an anniversary of my first celebration of the Holy Eucharist as a priest. That’s part of the story, but it begins with the time when I was a young boy of four years old, a time when my life was at risk. It was summer, and my family had rented a small garage apartment in Bay Head, New Jersey, because we loved the shore. In those days (not as in “a decree went out from Caesar Augustus”), summer garage apartments and many other homes in the United States still used ice boxes, literally. A great treat for me and my brother was to climb up onto the back of the ice truck when it was making a delivery to find a cool chip of ice we could then claim as our own. The driver of the ice truck, however, didn’t see me and backed up over me fracturing my skull. I was rushed to Point Pleasant Hospital where it was determined that only hope and prayer could be applied to my safekeeping. My parents called a summer supply priest who had been taking services in the little Episcopal chapel at Bay Head and asked him to come to the hospital to pray for me. His name was Father Gribben, and he came as requested to pray for me and with my parents at that critical time. An anxious few days ensued, but when I told the nurse that I was “Neddy,” not “Eddy,” it was reasonably clear I would survive. In 1970 when I was ordained to the priesthood, my father suggested I send Father Gribben an invitation to my ordination, and I wrote to him asking him if he remembered a little boy whom he had prayed for at Point Pleasant Hospital in 1948. He wrote back and said he remembered it very well and was only too pleased to learn that God had saved that little boy to be used now in God’s service as a priest in God’s Church. Miracle, or just good fortune? I’ll call it a miracle, and anyone who wants to dispute that can meet me after the service with their fists up. The second story is also dated 1948 and is that of a young minister who was just starting out in his new church, one of those grand inner-city edifices whose glory years were long past. He had worked for months to spruce up the church for Christmas Eve services only to have disaster strike a few days before when two inches of rain took out an enormous section of plaster from the wall right behind the altar. Nothing could be done in time for Christmas Eve and he was bitterly disappointed. That night, he and his wife attended a charity auction. An old table cloth was put up for bid and this young pastor was ecstatic because it was gigantic, more than large enough to cover the hole in the sanctuary wall. It was beautiful—handmade from lace with gold thread running through it. He was determined to have it, and $6.50 later (remember this was 1948) it was his. Christmas Eve came and as he unlocked his church, he spotted an older woman standing at the curb waiting for a bus. Knowing that the next bus wouldn’t be there for at least half an hour, he invited her to wait in the church where she would be warm. She’d been interviewing for a housekeeper’s job, but because she was a refugee and her English was so poor, the job wasn’t offered. But then she saw the tablecloth and shouted, “That’s mine! That’s my banquet cloth!” and showed the stunned minister her name embroidered there. She said, “My husband and I lived in Vienna before the War. We hated the Nazis and were going to flee to Switzerland. I went ahead but neither my husband nor our possessions arrived in Switzerland. I later learned he had died in a Nazi concentration camp. The minister offered to give her back her tablecloth but she declined and said it looked so beautiful on the church wall that they could just leave it there. Then she left the church to catch her bus. On Christmas Eve, the tablecloth was a great hit with the congregation. After services one old man lingered by the altar and told the pastor, “It is strange. Many years ago my wife had a banquet cloth just like that one, but that was long ago when we lived in Vienna. My wife is dead now, killed in the war.” Can you imagine the shock of that young minister but even more so when he found where the old woman lived and drove the old man to her apartment for an improbable reunion after being separated for nearly ten years and believing each other to have died. Miracle, or just good fortune? You’d have to ask that old man and that old woman how the tablecloth had made its journey from Vienna to America to cover the hole in the wall on Christmas Eve. [Story recounted by Richard Bauman in turn from The Rev. Howard Schade, onetime Pastor of First Reformed Church, Nyack, New York.] And then there is the story of Jesus. All of us know that story, or at least the important bits. And perhaps because it is so familiar to us we might miss some of those miraculous possibilities. Actually there are so many of them, I hardly know where to begin. Take, for instance, the choice of Bethlehem. A thousand years earlier that’s where King David had been born, but that was Bethlehem’s only claim to fame—perhaps as notable as “George Washington slept here.” Even so, the notion of a new king being born in a stable is at best quaint unless you adore cold, smelly, unsanitary places. And what were the chances that Joseph would actually remain by Mary’s side, given the fact that he was not the biological father or even that there was any biological father. On the face of it, the story is extraordinarily improbable. In point of fact there is no historical proof that December 25 is the date, and Biblical scholars are absolutely sure that the stories of Jesus’ birth were added to the Gospels very much after the stories of his resurrection, death, and life, in that order. And yet, the Bible is very clear that the Word became flesh and dwelled among us, that Jesus was the incarnation of God, and if we are to believe that, it is certainly a leap of faith, a suspension of all that might be logical, of all that might be true in the way that we ordinarily understand that word. In other words, a miracle. Actually, miracles aren’t all that uncommon, depending, I suppose, on your definition. I’m absolutely certain that all of us look for miracles from time to time, that all of us hope for miracles during those dark and fearful times in our lives or in the lives of those we love. The end of this year and the beginning of next year would probably be a good time for some miracles. We could hope for miracles in the international community where violence and disease run rampant. Injustice, mistrust if not hatred, greed and a lust for power, all the old besetting sins of humankind become magnified through the technology to track every instance of disaster no matter where it may be found. We need the miracles of compassion, selfless service, and an unbending will to do the right thing, none of which come naturally or easily but can be God’s intervention in the hearts and souls of all who can make a difference. Those are the miracles we need. But who am I? One person? What difference could I possibly make? These past few weeks all of us were given an opportunity to make a miraculous difference: to save the life or even several lives with just $12. That’s the cost of a mosquito net, and through your generosity of purchasing these nets, one net at a time, we hope to have saved some 6,000 or more Africans from death by malaria. One life, two lives, more, saved for $12. That’s a miracle. Closer to home there is no person here tonight untouched by the economic recession in which we find ourselves. I have yet to talk with anyone who is not anxious about his or her wellbeing and the wellbeing of our country. The national confidence has been shattered by story after story of at best shortsightedness and at worst inconceivable greed. It is simple to suggest that to a certain degree the whole economic enterprise has been a giant Ponzi scheme for which Bernard Madoff has simply been the most visible and the most brazen practitioner. Perhaps we need different sorts of miracles in this environment: patience, teamwork, trustworthiness, all in short supply but like every miracle to begin one person at a time. But this is Christmas. And the miracle of Christ’s birth is for all to know that we are loved by God, that we are safe in God, that we can never be separated from God. Because of the miracle of Christ’s birth I have found that to be true in my own life, I know that to be true for an immigrant couple united miraculously after ten years of believing each other had died, and I hope and pray that it is true for all of you tonight, tomorrow, and the days and weeks and years to come: to know we are loved by God, each of us and all of us. Let’s just start with that one miracle and perhaps the rest will take care of itself. |
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