“You are blessed and I am more blessed for having known you…”
Good morning friends.
Today’s sermon is a dialogue.
Which is a way to say conversation.
The conversation is between our Clergy in Charge
And between our facilities manager. Our thoughtful, kind hardworking, industrious…let’s just say, faithful facilities manager.
You may not know that I am taking a class on preaching.
She is also trained as a Worship Leader, a Eucharistic and Visitation Minister;
I lead noonday prayer services—praying for you and your families.
Our facilties manager, like this icon of Arch Angel Michael watches over and protects this house of prayer.
…Hold that image of the Angel and the image of care and prayer and protection in your mind. We will return to them later…
Back to our dialogue.
The back and forth sermon.
This sermon grows out of long conversations we have. We cannot talk for 5 minutes…5 turns into 15 and 15 into 50…and then there goes the afternoon.
We won’t do that today.
In Unison: We promise
However, we are going to talk about Jesus and Mary and Elizabeth and Christmas. We aren’t quite there yet so we won’t say “Merry Christmas” but we are almost there…we just held our version of a pageant with your cutely customed kids…
We’ve heard music and scriptures.
And, look…or hark, we’ve got lights and trees and bows and…
…and even if it’s not Christmas; it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…
So let us with haste go to Bethlehem to see the Christ child lying in a manger.
The way we go to the manger will determine how we see…and who we see as the Christ child.
Are these the children of God? (Gesturing to children.) Yes, most emphatically.
Are these the children of God? (Gesturing to congregation) Yes, especially if you take seriously St. John’s Gospel, “To all who believe he gave the power to become children of God.”
It is this Christ child lying in a manger that helps us to see one another as a bit more holy than it might have otherwise occurred for us to see.
There’s a poem, a poem considered to be the most important, and famous, haiku in all of Japanese history that says,
“An old silent pond.
Into the pond a frog jumps.
Splash! Silence again."
A Presbyterian minister says the poem frames a moment. “No subject could be more humdrum. No language could be more pedestrian. Basho, the poet, makes no comment on what he is describing. He implies no meaning, message, or metaphor. He simply invites our attention to no more and no less than just this: the old pond in its watery stillness, the kerplunk of the frog, the gradual return of the stillness.
In effect he is putting a frame around the moment, and what the frame does is enable us to see not just something about the moment, but the moment itself in all its ineffable ordinariness and particularity.”
“The chances are that if we had been passing by when the frog jumped, we wouldn't have noticed a thing or, noticing it, wouldn't have given it a second thought. But the frame sets it off from everything else that distracts us. That is the nature and purpose of frames. The frame does not change the moment, but it changes our way of perceiving the moment. It makes us notice the moment. It is what all great works of art ask us to do…
From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel and densest drama, art is asking us to pay attention.
Pay attention to the frog.
Pay attention to the pond.
In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein.”
It’s what Christmas does too. Great images of the holy family frame a moment and help us pay attention.
Great memories of Christmas past help us frame moments too. It’s the sharing of these memories and images that helps spread the story. The important part of sharing is that we hear, and sing, and act as though this isn’t all just some great work of art; personal memory; or even a great expression of faith; but the beginning of a way for us to live life.
Back to that image of Arch Angel Michael. This week our facilities manager shared with me that last Sunday night, as she was cleaning the sanctuary from a choral concert where more than 100 people attended, something happened.
There were a man and woman standing just outside the doors of the church. They asked to come inside, “for just a moment.”
She didn’t say this, but I instantly imagined them, as she spoke, as 7-foot-tall beings with white robes and wings with feathers poking out of their clothing.
Angels don’t need to have feathers. They can be anywhere. This is a story of one in a toll booth.
In January 2021, Leahruth Jemilo and three friends decided to book a weekend getaway. Jemilo was having a tough week at work, and by the Friday before the trip, she didn’t know if she could go.
“My tank was completely empty,”
She called her friends to cancel.
“I was crying to them saying, ‘I'm so anxious. I'm just exhausted from the week. I just don't think that I even have the energy to get in the car,’
and they said ‘Do it, just get in the car.’
“So I listened to my girlfriends, got in the car and started driving.”
As she drove down the highway, Jemilo started to cry. She put on her sunglasses to hide her tears, and pulled up to a toll booth at the Chicago, not making this up, it’s really called this, The Chicago Skyway Toll Bridge. Then she noticed her toll collector.
"She had these really beautiful, very long braids in her hair, and was wearing these incredible, really long purple feather earrings,”
The worker said hello, and asked Jemilo how she as doing.
“And I immediately burst into tears and I said, ‘I am actually not good. I am really not good.’”
Jemilo took off her sunglasses and tears streamed down her face. Then the toll collector said something to her that she won’t forget.
“She looked at me and her eyes were so kind. And she pointed her finger at me and she said, ‘Listen, I got you, girl. You're going to be in my prayers. And everything is going to be OK,’”
“My tears actually dried up when she said that. And I felt lighter in that moment.”
Jemilo thanked the woman, paid the toll and went on her way. Then she found herself crying again — this time with tears of happiness.
“Her simple act of kindness in response to what is typically a very simple question ... was incredibly meaningful to me in that moment. It was amazing to me that she showed that kind of kindness to a stranger who just happened to be driving through her part of the tollbooth.”
That’s not the entirety of the story of Elizabeth and Mary.
But it’s part of it. Father Martin says his synopsis of the story is, A young, scared, pregnant teenage girl runs to an older aunt for advice. Rather than asking, “what’s wrong?” the Aunt says, this is his translation, “girl you’re blessed and I’m more blessed for knowing you.”
And Mary stops right there and says, “huh maybe I am blessed,” and she starts singing.
And if this story is a frame that helps us slow down…
and if we are in the frame…
that means we are part of the story too.
The man and woman outside the doors of the church. The are messenger from heaven who come in, just for a minute, and say, “wow.”
And your kids, even without halos, or their best behavior, are angels.
And so are you. Angels. Messengers of Grace and Peace.
Kindness and prayers are absolutely part of the Christmas story. And that’s not the Biblical expectation. The messianic expectation is that the 7 footers, those who are bigger than Goliath are coming…Arch Angels are coming with swords. Heaven is split open…along with a few heads.
If you’re not inclined to read scripture metaphysically, then soldiers are the ones who will bring peace on earth.
And to be real that’s the world we live in. The Big. The strong. The well-armed.
We’ve got different story. Our Christmas Story isn’t just about Mary and Joseph and Shepherds. Our Christmas story is about us too. We’ve got a line in the story, it’s whispered by Elizabeth to Mary…
“You are blessed and I am more blessed for having known you.”