Sermons

Christmas Eve 2006
Surprising Joy

Rev. Linda Saffrey

“Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive around us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us.” Henri J.M. Nouwen, Finding My Way Home, Pathways to Life and the Spirit .

The visit of Mary to Elizabeth is a story about affirming what can be seen or imagined concerning God’s work among us. It is a tale about being welcoming and forming community, and about being gathered together around a promise. Whenever we lift up our concerns and rejoice as though our prayers have been fully answered, we truly celebrate God’s presence. In this season of Advent, when Christmas is almost here, we are already joyful. We are waiting for God. God is waiting for us!

Some years ago Rev. Chris Smith commented to a group of preachers that middle class privilege insulates us from real life. She said that if we are going to commit our lives to seeking justice and resisting evil, our sustained efforts do make a difference. The key is to not burn out or give up. We must work together in community and learn to celebrate the moments.
It is amazing what we can do because we do it together.

In one of my favourite stories, Joyce Hollyday writes that the friendship of Elizabeth and Mary is about tenderness and wonder, but most of all, it is a story of joy. She then describes a refugee camp in Honduras where preparations are underway for Christmas. The national guard executed young lay catechist. Later, his pregnant wife and five children gathered around his coffin as a single candle burned in the darkness. In another part of the camp a group of women gathered around a sick infant, singing, tending to him in a tent lit by light of a candle. The child dies, the singing stops.

But when Christmas Eve came the camp burst into joyful celebration. Women baked. Men butchered hogs for special pork tamales. With clay from the riverbed children made figurines for the nativity scene. From foil wrappers and other discarded bits and pieces they made ornaments and garlands for a tree branch.

Yvonne Dilling, a church worker from Indiana in the camp, told of a refugee woman who once asked her why she always looked so sad and burdened. Yvonne talked about the grief she felt over all the suffering she was witnessing and her commitment to give all of herself to the struggle of the refugees. This woman gently confronted her: “only people who expect to go back to North America in a year work the way you do. You cannot be serious about our struggle unless you play and celebrate and do those things that make it possible to give a lifetime to it.”
Every time the refugees were displaced and had to build a new camp – they immediately formed three committees: a construction committee, an education committee, and “the committee of joy”.

Joyce sums it up - because we see so much hardship around us it is easy to lose heart, but we should not give up hope, especially on behalf of people who have not lost theirs. (Joyce Hollyday: Clothed With the Sun: Biblical Women, Social Justice and Us, Westminster/John Knox. 1994. chapter: Witnesses to Life and Resurrection)

To wait with openness and trust is an enormously radical attitude toward life. It was the attitude of Elizabeth and Mary. In their Advent waiting they lived in joyful anticipation, open to the work of God in their lives and in the world. May we, in this Christian community, do likewise. May we hold up hope when hope seems foolish. When we have trouble believing, may we hold up the promises of God. May we bear one another up in Christian love. And in all circumstances, may we celebrate God’s presence.

Amen.