In The Grasp of Christmas Passed

Well, Merry Christmas, friends. On behalf of the leadership and staff of Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, Pastor Linda and I extend to you a joyous Christmas. And whether you came by four-wheel drive, or snowmobile, or dogsled, or on foot, we’re glad you have come to worship the Newborn King.

Christmas 2009 will undoubtedly come to be known as the year it snowed. This year will certainly go down in our memories alongside The Halloween Blizzard of 1991, the January Super Bowl storm, and, if you’re old enough to remember, The Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940. This Christmas, presents may not be opened as scheduled. This Christmas, meals may not be shared as planned. This Christmas, the sermon I had written for tonight will not be preached. It is certainly Christmas Eve, but a different one than most of us have ever experienced.

Earlier this week, Kathy Newton asked me if I can remember a Christmas Eve when the weather caused a cancellation of worship services. My answer to her was “almost.” Almost. The storm began late on the evening of December 23, 1984; snow falling sideways, wind howling out of the west, and the temperature in Sioux Falls was dropping fast. As I lay in bed and pulled the quilt up over my shoulders, my mind raced with the tasks that needed to be accomplished in the next 28 hours; the cleaning, the wrapping, the preaching, and the praying.

At 2:00 AM, the phone rang and flung me from my slumber. “Hi Steve, this is Cindy, and I am so sorry to call you and wake you at this hour. My brother Ed went into the ditch about a mile from your house and he’s stranded at the convenience store. Our road is already drifted in and we can’t get to him; could you go get him and put him up for the night?” Could I do it? Yes. Did I want to? Heavens, no! But I did it.

Ed was a thirty-something single guy that I had met at church a few times, but I didn’t really know him. In the few conversations I did have with him, he seemed painfully shy and socially awkward. When I picked him up at the all night store, he thanked me for coming, and then remained silent the rest of the way home.

At daylight, it appeared that our Christmas Eve worship would be sparsely attended. The weather report said that the storm had stalled over our city, and both snow and temperature would continue to fall throughout the day. The pastors decided that all but one of our services would be cancelled; the 6:00 PM show would go on as planned. I left home at 4:00 to prepare, and told Marsha and the kids that it would be safest for them to simply stay home. Besides, Ed was still there.

Almost no one attended worship that night, and I wondered if I was even crazy to be there. My Ford Fairmont barely started in the parking lot following worship, and I slowly limped home, hoping that Ed’s sister had retrieved her brother. Nope. When I arrived home, three faces peered out of the frost encrusted windows; a pair of young children’s, and Ed’s.

Marsha told me that it had been a long day, not with our kids, but with Ed. He sat in the kitchen and talked to her as she prepared our meal. He cried when he described his mother’s death, some ten years past, and then he sat quietly at the kitchen table for the rest of the day, as she tip-toed around him, compassionate but busy. We ate our Christmas Eve dinner in near silence, and at about 9:00 PM, the phone rang; it was Cindy. “Steve, great news! The highway is open, but there’s a huge drift across our county road. If you can drop Ed off on one side of the drift, we’ll be waiting on the other side.” I told Cindy I was getting my boots on even as she spoke!

The eight mile drive was treacherous, and took me an hour each way. After Ed had safely crawled over the top of the drift, I turned around and drove back home, congratulating myself for how nice it was of me to pick Ed up the night before, and house him, and feed him, and risk my own life driving home this uninvited guest.

On that first Christmas Eve there was an uninvited guest that arrived into Bethlehem; actually, there were two of them. And they weren’t uninvited at all; they were commanded to come by the throne of Rome, so the census could be taken and the taxes could be raised. Over three days, Mary and Joseph had walked the 80 miles from Nazareth, and by the time they had reached Bethlehem, the city was overwhelmed with travelers. Food was in short supply, and so was patience, and all the rooms had already been rented to others. How did the couple come to find shelter in a barn? Was it a greedy innkeeper, making a few extra shekels on the only space available? Or was it a compassionate grandfather who recognized a desperate couple when he saw one? Scripture doesn’t say; only that donkeys, sheep and cattle were the eyewitnesses when a small child came into this selfish, sinful world. And the name of that child was Jesus. The name of that child was Jesus.

I have often wondered why God made the incarnation so complicated. Maybe you have too. Why did Mary and Joseph have to experience such fear when Gabriel revealed to them God’s plan? Why couldn’t the Savior have been born in a more suitable place, at a more convenient time, and even among more respectable parents than a calloused carpenter and a teenaged single woman? I believe the answer is to be found in one of the other names that this child carries; Emmanuel: God is with us. He did not come as privileged royalty, he did not live a life of luxury; he did not die in a sleep-number bed. He was one of us in every way, this Savior of the world. He would know our pain, he would witness our religious hypocrisy, he would experience our fears and failures, and in the end, he would understand rejection, humiliation and death.

And why? Why would he do this? This is why: So that we could know just how much he loves us. So we could know that whatever path we take in this life, the shortest road home always leads to Jesus. So that we could know that, though our sins are as scarlet, when Jesus looks at us, we are as pure as the snow that has fallen around us tonight. Christmas saved your life - and mine – saved us for eternity, and that is why we rejoice this night.

Now, back to my story of “The Mother of All Christmas Eve Snowstorms.” When I finally returned home from delivering Ed to his family, all was dark, except for the Christmas tree. Beneath the dimly lit strands of lights I saw two gifts, crudely wrapped, under the tree. Strange; I didn’t remember seeing them before. When I looked more closely, I saw the gift tags, scrawled in a child’s printing: “To Ed from Kyle,” “To Ed from Kindra,” undoubtedly snuck there in the late afternoon. When I opened the gifts I found wool socks that might have been mine, but now were gifts to Ed. A jar of jam from our pantry, hastily wrapped for Ed. And now I felt two inches tall. My paltry attempt at hospitality was dwarfed by the generous, gracious reach of these two small children. On that frigid Christmas Eve in 1984, I met that cranky innkeeper…and it was me! And the man I picked up in a blizzard the night before was not named “Ed.” The name of that man was Jesus.

May I suggest to you that when you go home tonight, the crying child in your midst will be named Jesus. The crabby clerk at the department store carries the name of Jesus. The mean-spirited boss, the smart-alec teenager, the homeless beggar on the off-ramp at Maplewood Mall, the mother of four preschoolers running the aisles at Target, causing chaos: all of them share a common name; Their name is Jesus. Will you welcome them? In one of his Christmas sermons, Luther would write:

I know you are saying “If I was the innkeeper I would have welcomed the baby Jesus. I would have held him close and changed his diaper and fed him a bottle and given his parents my bed to sleep in.” Then why don’t you do the same for your neighbor? Luther asked

So tonight, we celebrate, and tomorrow, too. Then, like the shepherds, we go back into our routine lives, praising God and caring for his sheep. People, rejoice! A Savior has been born for you, and he will save you from your sins. Merry Christmas! Amen.