Sermon: Impossible Birth

Luke 2:1-20

Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our minds and hearts be acceptable in Your sight, Oh Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer.  Amen.

            I am a New Englander, indeed a Connecticutian, born and bred, so to me Christmas means being here, preferably with a non-hazardous blanket of white covering the ground, surrounded by a community of faith in a New England meetinghouse and by family and friends.  There is a sense of home that I get at Christmastime here in CT that I don’t get even all that often living here even throughout the rest of the year.  And this year, as I get to watch my son, Brayden, now 1 ½ open presents in our own home, and have it dawn on him that something special is happening, it just makes that feeling come alive deeper for me.  I share that information with you so I can share a story of one of my Christmases past, the Christmas that I almost didn’t make it home.

            You see, for six months from November of 2004-May of 2005 I had the opportunity to live as a missionary in the Dominican Republic working with teams from the US who were there on medical and construction missions in a city called La Romana and the surrounding sugarcane workers’ villages.  Ryan, my now husband, and I had just gotten engaged in July, and I left the first day of November to move to the DR – not sure of what that might entail.  The differences in a variety of ways were, of course, staggering, but being a CT native, there was nothing stranger to me – or that made me long for home more – than Christmas lights hung outside house and apartment windows in the middle of the 80 degree nights.  So I was excited to be able to take a week at Christmastime to come home to see my family and to spend the holidays where I belonged. 

            Well in December of 2004, Christmas weekend to be exact, you might remember there was also a HUGE airport workers’ strike at the Philadelphia International Airport…not to mention the weather that comes with Christmas in the Northeast.  So I boarded my plane at about 2 pm on December 23^rd in Santo Domingo with a quick connection in Philadelphia…all with a plan to arrive home by about 8 pm that night.  But Mother Nature, and the airport workers decided that a different plan should be in place for me and about 1000 other people.  So I missed my connecting flight, spent the night standing in line to change my ticket eating pretzels and water, waited through about 10 different possible flights for my name to come up on the screen that I had made it, all the while assuring that no one should drive down in the midst of the storm that was going on outside to get me, and finally got on a plane at 5 pm on Christmas Eve.  When my name came up on the screen I was filled with a whole host of emotion.  I was relieved that it was finally happening.  I was certain now that I would be home and was happy about that.  Due to a lack of sleep I think I even cried, and the poor ticket taker wasn’t so sure what to do with me. 

            With fear of sounding a little overdramatic, when I arrived home at about 8 pm Christmas Eve night, Ryan and I pulled up to my parents’ house, and it was the most glorious thing I had ever seen.  Now, in order to understand the irony in that you need to know that my parents live in a tiny cape in Naugatuck, CT that gets adorned with a few Christmas lights and a big light up Whinnie the Pooh Santa in the front yard.  Not a mansion by any stretch of the imagination, but I was home – with my luggage to boot.  And it felt like a mini Christmas miracle.  So when my father told me that he had signed me up to usher at the 11 pm service, all I could do was giggle and then thank God that I had made it back in time to do so. 

            And so it was there, sitting in the Congregational Church of Naugatuck at 11:30 pm this very night 5 years ago with Ryan and my best friend, Amy, on one side of me, my dad, uncle, and grandma on the other side, and my mom looking quite angelic up singing in the choir – that, after the realization I had been awake for about 42 hours and was listening to a Christmas Eve sermon about the history of the crèche set in, I got a serious case of the church giggles, and then I felt a profound sense of home…the side effect of which was to have both a sense of awe and an aching in my heart for dear Mary.

            How must it have felt to have had the beginnings of labor pains while on the road to an unknown place in the middle of a caravan of people – some of whom probably knew hers and Joseph’s circumstances and did not approve?  Most sources would say the journey probably took anywhere from 3 full days to a week – and all at the insistence of a government that they probably had mixed feelings about.  And so they traveled.  Certainly young Mary realized the place that they would end up would not be home, but I can imagine her hoping for somewhere – an ideal location for this impossible birth to take place – that would offer her at least a bit of comfort and safety for her newborn son, the one foretold by prophets and angels alike.

            And so the story goes that the time came for her to give birth to her firstborn son, and she wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn.  Mary and Joseph landed, for all intents and purposes, in what was more than likely more of a cave than the wooden stables we see in nativity scenes, where animals were kept…and laid Jesus in a stone feeding trough – bread for the world.  It certainly could not have been the modicum of comfort that Mary sought as they rode into Bethlehem, and she felt the time drawing closer.  But the impossible birth happened.  What the angel told she and Joseph came to pass, and we hear that the angels passed along the word to the shepherds.  The shepherds traveled to the new home that Mary and Joseph made for their new family and shared their joy and all that they had heard about who the baby Jesus was and would become.  And Mary pondered everything – that miracle and all that came with it – in her heart.  Perhaps for Mary it was the beginning of a new journey of faith that she didn’t even know would exist for her 9 months earlier.  She had become a mother in the midst of difficult circumstances and knew that her child was something special.  She didn’t quite know what that might mean, but in the silence of her heart she gave thanks to God.  She wondered about her life ahead, and she realized that a miracle had taken place. 

            This year, perhaps more than others, I have had my radar out looking for Christmas miracles.  We have been living in difficult times, no doubt…perhaps not as difficult as many, but not without some extreme challenges.  And fortunately my radar has been working overtime.  I have watched “impossible births” take place all over.  I have heard the excitement in some of your voices as you have shared that someone arrived home despite the 2 feet of snow in some places last weekend.  I have celebrated finding jobs with people who have been searching for over a year and wondering what will happen in the next month if one was not found.  I have seen generosity overflowing from this congregation as people brought in all of the gifts for the Giving Tree, have given to the Blanket Fund, to Angels for Anthems, the Flower Fund, and to our own Christmas offering.  I have heard stories and seen in action the outreach of friends in our congregation to others who they know are suffering and struggling to make ends meet, and ask nothing in return for their gifts.  We have seen people come home from the hospital or rehab just in time to spend the holidays with their families.  I have read the e-mails detailing adoption processes going well and possible cures for folks for whom there had previously been no hope.  Through our prayer shawl ministry we have put a song in the hearts of people of all ages who will now be wrapped up in the warmth, love, and prayers of a new quilt or shawl from this congregation, and will face treatments or medical procedures or a deep personal issue with more strength, courage, and hope than before.  These, my friends, are our modern day Christmas miracles.  These are the impossible births that are taking place right here in the midst of our congregation and community – giving us a sense of home and hope…that we are in the right place. 

            So my prayer for all of us this Christmas and in the year ahead is that we will all keep our radar tuned to the ways that God is coming to us, to the miracles – those impossible births --  (both small and large alike) that are taking place around us and happening in our own lives.  That each of us will find a place that is home for us in the midst of our crazy busy lives and even the everyday ordinariness of life as usual – whether that is a real solid physical home, this church, or even a memory of Christmas past.  And that through those realizations, we will know that we are loved, that we are blessed, that we are forgiven, that we have been chosen by a grace-filled and amazing God who works miracles even today and calls us to share what we have seen with others.  So tonight and in the days ahead, let us proclaim the Good News of God’s amazing grace and goodness to others along with the shepherds.  Let us share the joy and the hope that can spring from a night like this – even in a time such as this.  May God Bless you and yours this Christmas and beyond!  Amen.