Sermon preached by The Reverend Dr. Harold T. Lewis

SERMON PREACHED BY THE REVEREND DR HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA ON THE FEAST OF THE NATIVITY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, 2004



"And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn." (Luke 2:7)

One of these days some enterprising doctoral student will write a dissertation on American culture as reflected on the covers of Time and Newsweek. There must be an editorial department at each magazine whose members stay up nights determining who among the newsmakers of the previous week should be on their covers. Villains or vixens? Dictators or diplomats? Rock stars or rocket scientists? Sometimes even four-legged creatures get the nod, such as those who win, or almost win, the Triple Crown. The magazines' cover story departments probably also confer with one another from time to time, to decide whether it is in the public interest for each publication to run simultaneous articles about the same person. That must have been the case on December 13th, because both magazines, in honor of his upcoming birthday, ran cover stories on Jesus Christ. The title of the Newsweek article sounded almost scholarly: "The Birth of Jesus: Faith and History: How the Story of Christmas Came to Be," whereas Time's approach was a little more tantalizing, more Da Vinci Code-esque, if you will, suggesting that if you just plunk down $3.95 (I remember when it was a quarter) and read the story, you will gain some theological insights not found in Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. Its title: "Secrets of the Nativity: Why the story of Jesus' Birth inspires so much scholarly interest --- and faith." It caught my eye.

Now I have read the articles in their entirety, and have even perused a review of them in The Wall Street Journal, in its Friday column called "Houses of Worship." The articles mention "the clash between literalism and a more historical view of the faith." They point out the discrepancies between Matthew's version of the Nativity and Luke's. They raise the question as to whether the roots of the Nativity story are pagan or apostolic. And understandably, lots of ink is used in a discussion of that quintessential theological conundrum, the Virgin Birth. And as each verse of Scripture is subjected to the pop culture lenses of the writers' microscopes, there are two underlying, if unspoken questions: One: Is the story fact or fairy tale? And two, Can religion and science coexist? And if you look hard enough, you'll find an answer, in what is probably the most redeeming (no pun intended) sentence in the two stories: "Faith and reason need not be at war; they are, as John Paul II once wrote, 'like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth,' --- and the spirit cannot take flight without both." The article goes on to say: "This is why modern, grounded, discerning people" --- sounds like people at Calvary Church to me --- "make leaps of faith, accepting that, as the Gospel of John put it, 'the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.'" The same theological point is made by Maureen O'Hara, in the Christmas movie, "Miracle on Thirty-fourth Street," when she tells her daughter Natalie Wood who is wondering about the existence of Santa Claus," "Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to." Pretty good theology for a 1940s movie.

In other words, whether the Birth took place in Bethlehem or Nazareth, whether the delivery room was a house, a courtyard or a cave, how many Wise Men there were (Scripture does not tell us that there were two, three, or more) and whether the angels sang the Gloria in Excelsis in G Major or D Minor (although we do know for a fact that it was set to Anglican chant!) are all irrelevant details. The beautifully woven story, telling the timeless tale of an arduous trek to Bethlehem, the refusal at the inn, a holy birth in an animal's trough, with shepherds abiding in the field and angels hovering overhead, speaks to deeper, more significant truths.

First, Christmas confronts us with the truth that God chooses for special purposes those who are insignificant in the worldly scheme of things. Caesar Augustus was the most powerful man on earth. Building on the foundation laid by his great-uncle, Julius, the Empire grew under his leadership. It is said that he found Rome in brick, and left it in marble. Indeed, it was to support his campaigns and to support his lavish court at Rome that "all the world should be taxed." But Caesar Augustus would fade into relative obscurity compared to Jesus, the child of poor parents born in Palestine, a remote part of the Empire of which the Emperor might not have even been aware. This Birth serves to remind us that if God can enter the world in virtual anonymity, content to be warmed by the fetid breath of an ox, that he, the Divine Potter, can take us, frail clay that we are, and make us into anything he chooses. This theme is replicated throughout the Gospels. Jesus chooses to minister to the paralytic on the side of the pool; he chooses to hold up the example of the vertically-challenged Zacchaeus; he makes Samaritans "good."

Next, Christmas, through the Angels' song, reminds us that the Incarnate Lord is a sign of peace in the midst of all the wars that we fallible human beings continue to wage, and seem hell-bent on waging. And how we need to hear the peaceful song of the angels! Earlier this week, we learned, to our horror, that twenty-two people, most of them U.S. military personnel, were killed when a suicide bomber's device detonated in a mess tent, the most recent major tragedy in a seemingly senseless conflict in which our men and women in uniform, whether at lunch or on the battlefield, are unnecessarily vulnerable as they are placed in harm's way.

Christmas brings us in touch with a sense of calm in the midst of our several anxieties. The very reason that we can stop at the Crèche and sing, "All is calm, all is bright," is because that scene represents for us an unbelievable solace in the midst of the hustle and bustle of our lives, which are too often anything but "calm and bright." We bring to the Crèche our selves and souls and bodies, our failures, our broken relationships, our hopes for reconciliation and goodwill.

Last week, during the annual wreath-making party, I had the privilege of sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace in the Parlor and reading the Christmas story to the children of the parish who were gathered around me. Half the children made bets on whether I could make it down to the floor; the other half made bets as to whether I could get up! I read: "And Mary wrapped the baby in bands of cloth and laid him in the manger," whereupon little Lee Mueller interrupted me, and said "No, she wrapped him in swaddling clothes!" I said to myself, "Right on! My kind of girl! A true aesthete! A budding philologist!" Here was a child who, at least on a Sunday-to-Sunday basis had not been exposed to the King James Version of the Bible, and yet, somewhere she had heard the Christmas story in traditional language, and she believed that that story was so special that somehow it became less special, less sacred, less meaningful, when stripped of its quaint and archaic prose.

We need beauty. We need our stories in beautiful language. "We need," as Harvard Chaplain Peter Gomes has said, "our metaphors, and the sentiment that is the grease without which our human machinery would break down and wear out." More and more, "in this sinful and broken world," we need to hear (and sing) of a little town in which we place our hope for the world; we need to hear of a little baby who would be a rival to the Roman Empire. We need to hear of an infant who will "save us all from Satan's pow'r when we were gone astray." With all due respects to Time and Newsweek, we are more than a group of "inquiring minds who want to know," and then when we find out, reduce everything to the least common denominator. This is the church, where intellect and faith, Word and Sacrament, and poetry and music mingle, a place where all our senses are fed, in order that we can catch on earth a glimpse of the heavenly Jerusalem.

And as we seek to bring the beauty, the solace and the hope of the Crèche into our lives and the lives of those around us, let us pray that we may love Jesus as Mary loved him; serve him as Saint Joseph served him; worship him as the shepherds worshipped him; adore him as the wise men adored him; and praise him as the holy angels praised him, who is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace!