Christmas Eve 2011

4:00 p.m.

“Promises, Promises”

Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay

I was blessed to raise my children in Duluth.

Nestled on the shores of Lake Superior, it is called “God’s Country” for a reason.

While my children were young, I stayed home by patching together a number of little jobs - I taught music at a private elementary school, managed a choral ensemble, and did a lot of singing.

Duluth being a big small town, I had lots of chances to sing.

One of the places I sang was at the Duluth Convention Center for the Women’s Club’s Christmas pageant.  I played the part of Mary and sang a song I still cannot get enough of: the Magnificat.

The song is sung by Mary after she learns she is to give birth to the Messiah.

The song sings of how it is her unborn child will help the world learn God’s heart - that finally, we might learn to change the world so that people aren’t living in the oppression of poverty and want when clearly there is enough for all.

Mary sings a song of God’s vision.  A vision of enough for all lived when we learn to share.

So, I was happy to sing that song.

And, it was great because I got to bring my kids into the mix and give them a chance to dress up like angels in order to be a part of the pageant.

All they had to bring was white socks.  The rest was provided.

The kids were psyched.  There were cookies - way too many! - out backstage with no monitors to insure that they didn’t gorge themselves on sugar.  So of course they, and all the other angels, did just that.  They were wired.

And, back stage was very cool because this pageant used a real donkey!  You could see it and pet it and for sure, you could smell it.

So, we got to the arena in time to rehearse, costume, and get ready for the big show.

All was going well.

Until the donkey started experiencing intestinal distress.

It was clear the donkey was not well.

It was clear, because as the angels skidded around on their stocking feet back stage, wings aflutter, they encountered evidence of the donkey’s distress.

On their once-white socks.

It seemed there was no place where the unhappy donkey had not traversed.

As awareness dawned in the hearts of the angels, chaos ensued.

There were shrieks and howls of disgust that didn’t seem to hurt the donkey’s feelings at all, but it made the stage managers crazy.  The kids (and some of their mothers) went nuts.

What to do with a band of angels in donkey-dunged socks???

Well, what we did (even as some of us couldn’t keep from howling with laughter) was go on with the telling of the story.

The angel Gabriel appeared to Mary to tell her the news of the impending birth.

Mary sang a song of wonder and hope for God’s vision made flesh and her willingness to believe that with God all things ARE possible.

The angels sang out that same good news to the shepherds and they invited the shepherds to come and see, to open their hearts to wonder.

And they found themselves clustered around a newly born babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger because like so many other poor in the world, there was no room for them.  Anywhere.

The whole company of creation - angels, shepherds, wise men and dazed new parents - stopped.

And wondered.

And remembered the promises of God - that with God ALL things are possible.

Brown socks on that long ago night were all too real.

But no more real were they than the power of entering into the story of the birth of hope.

Here’s the thing.

There’s not a one of us who goes through life with pristine white socks.

They - and our lives - get mucked up.

We encounter things along the way that we don’t much want to deal with.  We step in messes.  Life happens.  Perfection is shown to be a destructive myth.

So we shriek and fuss and become outraged and sometimes grossed-out by what it is life has dealt us.  US!  Angels that we are!

And the anxiety and how-could-this-happen of brown socks can near immobilize us.  

But oh, just maybe, we stop along our way.  We stop long enough to allow ourselves to be drawn into the story of how it is the Word became flesh and that Word dwells among us - we of the brown socks.

Jesus came into the world not to condemn the world, but that we might know light and hope and peace and the power of love lived with unclenched fists and open hearts.

It’s not likely we will ever use a live donkey for our children’s pageants here.

But we will tell the story, over and over and over again, of how it is we are called to stop.  And wonder.  

How is it the angel sings yet the good news of the possible?

God with us. All of us.

Brown socks or no.