GOD WITH US – WITHOUT A RIPPLE
In the Broadway musical Mame, Mame Dennis lives the good life in the flapping twenties until she is suddenly faced with the “Crash of ’29.” She loses everything. She has nowhere to turn. In that bleak October she sings
We may be rushing things, but deck the hall again now…
For we need a little Christmas right this very minute.There is something about Christmas that holds a promise that somehow things will be better. Mame looks to Christmas for a miracle.
The Christmas story itself tells us the shepherds on that Judean hillside, poor and oppressed by a foreign power, get the message that something truly miraculous had happened: a Savior has been born! The heavens break forth in Glorias! The Messiah has come! Tonight people all over the world are filling churches to overflowing in the hope of experiencing the spirit of that first holy night. Like Mame, we by our presence here say, “we need a little Christmas right this very minute. We, too, look for the miracle of Christmas.Two thousand years ago shepherds rushed to a manger seeking liberation from the tyranny of poverty and the yoke of foreign oppressors. We come here recognizing that we are often held captive to the tyranny of our own self-sufficiency and independence. We recognize that our society is out of control with its quest for power: the rich have gotten richer at the expense of the poor. Our technology, once the hope of a better life, now threatens not only our lives but the very existence of our planet. Terrorism has become the latest weapon to undermine the human spirit.In the face if such human frailty and brokenness we turn to Christmas. We search out the promise of transformation and renewal. We look to the Christ to restore sanity to a confused and misguided world. We want peace for our divisions. We want wholeness to replace our brokenness. We want the miracle of Christmas. We seek Emmanuel—GOD WITH US.Ted Loder, a Methodist minister, tells of a message he once saw on the wall of a Chinese restaurant: Entering the forest, God moves not with the grass.
Entering the water, God makes no ripple.
The Christ event went virtually unnoticed on that first Christmas. We, too, often miss the “God with us.” Perhaps we are looking too hard or in the wrong place. Was it Mark Twain who said:
The greatest miracles happen when people say,
“I don’t see anything miraculous in that!”
God very often enters our lives without a ripple, in the most “miraculous” ways. Our being here tonight is just one such way God is with us. Whenever we worship together, when we hear God’s Word and share together the Sacrament of the bread and wine transformed, we become one with the very Christ from whom the shepherds sought liberation, and the same God that has the power to transform and heal us, to make us one.God is with us with hardly a ripple in the poor and oppressed. Our God entered human history to identify with our brokenness. There is no shortage of injustice, intended or not, all around us. The cry for peace is easily heard close to home. It comes from an elderly relative or neighbor, frightened by loneliness. It comes from a friend or neighbor going through a divorce or separation. It comes from a family member with an addiction. It comes from young people trying understand themselves and the world around them. With hardly a ripple God enters our world.If God is present in those who seek peace and justice, God is surely present in those who work for peace and justice. So we, too, can be the unlikely miracle of God with us. Christ came among us as one of us to establish a new order. He left it to those who profess faith in him to help bring about that new creation. When we reach out to others with love and peace, we fulfill Christ’s plan by becoming God’s presence in the world. We become the reason we celebrate this night.So on this feast of the dawning of our salvation, we acknowledge the Christ as our Lord and we recommit ourselves to his eternal plan of a new creation. And if ever throughout the new year we find ourselves needing “a little Christmas right this very minute,” recall that the real miracle of Christmas is foundin our worship together,
in those who suffer, and
in those who make peace.
All these are the rather “un-miraculous” ways we share in the Christ event celebrated each Christmas.
With hardly a ripple God is with us right here, right now, right this very minute!