A Kyrie Christmas

 

Jesu Juva

John 1:1-14                                                                   

December 25, 2020

Christmas Day                                                    

Dear saints of our Savior~

          The hymn we just sang is ancient.  It’s at least a century older than Luther.  Originally, it was a Christmas folk song with just one stanza.  Then Luther got ahold of it, added six more stanzas, and made it into a major Christmas hymn—unpacking the mystery of the incarnation.  The English translation has been periodically revised and edited over the years.  The one thing that has stayed the same is the final word of each and every stanza:  Alleluia!  Four syllables of praise to the Lord.  Alleluia!  It’s a perfectly appropriate word for this day of celebration.

          There’s just one problem.  This ancient hymn—including Luther’s expansion of it—never ended with an alleluia.  Those four syllables of praise are not found anywhere in this hymn.  Instead, the actual final word for each stanza is kyrieleis—an abbreviation for Kyrie Eleison—which, in English, means:  Lord, have mercy.  It’s not alleluia; it’s kyrieleis.  It’s not four syllables of praise; it’s four syllables of desperation.

          I did some research on this—exchanged emails with at least one expert on such things—and no one can say with certainty exactly why or when the switch happened.  But it’s not too hard to figure out.  Alleluia is a happy word—a celebratory word—a word brimming with positive associations.  But Lord, have mercy?!  That’s the prayer of the helpless.  That’s the refrain of the desperate.  That’s the plea of lonely, locked down lepers.  Lord, have mercy?!  That’s a real buzzkill for what’s supposed to be the hap-happiest season of all.  Kyrieleis is an unexpected dose of gloom beneath the glitter of Christmas.

          If ever there was a year to put the “Kyrie” back in Christmas, this is it.  We each have our own list of losses for 2020.  For people who like to be “in control,” this year has taught us that we aren’t in control.  Nothing is predictable.  Covid can be a convenient scapegoat for everything that’s gone wrong this year, but we know better.  If we are honest, then we know that we ourselves have contributed to the problem, not the solution.  We ourselves have engineered and orchestrated untold damage and pain by our own sinful words and deeds.  Oh, we can usually manage to be more nice than naughty on Christmas morning.  But the rest of the year we’re quite comfortable pretending to be God in the place of God.  Christmas is the perfect time to confess your mess—to declare your desperation, to herald your helplessness:  Kyrie eleison.

          We also need to remember that the very first Christmas—the actual birthday of Jesus—that was a Kyrie Christmas.  Mary and Joseph weren’t whistling “alleluia” when they came limping into Bethlehem.  The real Christmas isn’t the one painted by Norman Rockwell or sung about by Bing Crosby.  The real Christmas is the one written about by Matthew, Luke, and John, and sung about by angels.  Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem because of taxes—because the money-hungry tyrants in Rome forced them to undertake the dangerous journey from Nazareth at a time when Mary was “great with child,” and had no business straying so far from home.  There was no warm, sanitized room awaiting them in Bethlehem, but a cold, dark barn or cave.  There was no bed, but only a floor covered with hay and manure.  Where’d they get light?  Where’d they get even a bucket of warm water?  A towel or a washcloth?  Let’s not romanticize it or get sentimental.  It must have been misery.  It’s not the way any baby—least of all Jesus—should have been born.

          And yet it was.  Far from home, in the dark, in the cold, in the mess, in the manure, to a fearful, first-time, teenage mother—God was born.  Kyrie eleison!

          This Kyrie Christmas—the real, unvarnished Nativity—is one we can all identify with.  It’s a story that gives meaning to the gloom we sometimes feel beneath all the glitter.  God’s mercy for our messy lives is now located in the flesh and blood of His dear Son.  This mercy is exactly what we need.  This mercy gives meaning and hope to our own dark, cold, messy Christmases—which often are not very merry or bright.  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  And in that good news we can find peace, contentment, and joy.

          For Christmas—the real Christmas—is not about presents, or food, or even family and friends.  It’s about God taking on our flesh and blood, being born as one of us, to share our grief, to bear our sorrows, to save us from our sins.  In Jesus, God has united Himself with us so that, whether in the best of times or the in the worst of times—whether it’s an “alleluia Christmas” or a “Kyrie Christmas,” God is with us—in terrible tragedies and in moments of sheer joy.  God is with you.  In Jesus, your sin has been atoned for.  In Jesus, you are forgiven.  In Jesus, you have life that lasts forever.  Nothing can separate you from His love.

          If you had been there, on that cold, dark night when Jesus was born, the first sound you would have heard would have been a cry.  How fitting is that?  God—your God—knows what it means to cry, to suffer, to be helpless, and, yes, even to die.  You do not have a Savior who is unable to sympathize with your weaknesses, but One who has experienced all of them.  That means that, no matter what your pain may be, He redeems it.  He meets you in the midst of it, with mercy.  Kyrie eleison!

          In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

O Tannenbaum!

 

Jesu Juva

Luke 2                                                                           

December 24, 2020

Christmas Eve                                                                   

Dear saints of our Savior,

          O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum, wie treu sind deine Blätter!  That may be the first German phrase I ever learned.  I wasn’t lucky enough to have German-speaking grandparents.  But the soundtrack to my childhood Christmases was Nat King Cole.  And he crooned out that tune auf Deutsch.  And, of course, I also knew the English translation:  O Christmas tree, o Christmas tree, how lovely are your branches.  Or, my own personal translation:  How faithful is your foliage.

          In my family we always had a live, fresh cut Christmas tree (like the one behind me tonight).  The smell, the sap, the needles—that’s how Christmas was done.  (In fact, my sisters and I were forbidden to associate with families that had artificial trees.)  But I lost my Tannenbaum bigotry twenty years ago.  It happened on a dark and snowy night in a Kmart on South Minnesota Avenue in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  Turns out, someone in our family was allergic to tree pollen; so I swallowed my pride and my prejudice and brought home a blue-light special from Kmart.

          Best purchase I ever made.  For twenty years that artificial tree has stood like a champion in our living room every December.  Every year someone will inevitably ask, “Is it real?”  But two decades in, I’ve started to wonder:  Just how long can this tree last? Will its hundreds of branches continue to support the weight of all those lights and ornaments?  Will we still be able to shape and bend a box of branches stored in the basement into a thing of beauty? Will those branches still be “lovely” after all these years?  Will that “foliage” remain “faithful?”

          If ever there would have been a year for the prized Tannenbaum to give out, this would have been it, right?  Christmas 2020 is a little different for most of us.  If you had told me a year ago that we were going to need TWO Christmas Eve services in 2020 to accommodate the crowd size, that would have been music to my ears.  Little did I know our seating capacity would be cut in half by Covid—that this year there would be no room for anybody in about half of our pews.

          When Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem, there was, famously, no room for them in the inn.  This year has been the year for “no room.”  No room for you at the office. No room for you in the classroom.  No room for you at the coffee shop and the barber shop.  No room at the restaurant, theater and stadium.  No room for you at church.  No room for you with loved ones.

          That’s been an inconvenience; but it also highlights a deeper problem which transcends 2020.  The real problem isn’t with the virus; the problem has always been with us.  In this year of “no room,” we ourselves have subtly shut out the Savior.  We who know best have silently refused to make room for Jesus in our lives and hearts.  We’re no better than the Bethlehemites of the first Christmas. 

          No room for Jesus in our lives.  No room for His Word.  No room for His promises and His love.  No room in our hearts for growth in faith.  No room for the forgiveness of others.  No room for the people—the family—whom Jesus has given us to love and care for.  On this strange Christmas in this strange year, our sin has estranged us from the Christ we come to worship.  In our lives, our homes, our hearts, the sad, unspoken sentiment of the season is: No room—no room for Jesus.

          As a preacher, I approach Christmas every year the same way I approach my aging, artificial Christmas tree.  With the tree I wonder:  Will that fake foliage hold up for another Christmas?  Will that Tannenbaum have what it takes to lighten the darkness of our home for yet another holiday season?  Will it bear the weight of lights and ornaments and memories?  Will those ever-green branches retain the strength to point us upward, from whence cometh our help, in the Christ of

Christmas?  I know every branch of that old tree and its faithful foliage; and once again it did not fail to inspire.  It’s done its job; and now I must do mine.

          The Christmas gospel I’m called to preach is much older than my old tree.  But every year as I approach the pulpit on Christmas Eve (and this, by the way, is my 25^th consecutive Christmas in the pulpit), I approach the task with uncertainty.  It’s such an old and ancient story which took place back in the days of Caesar Augustus (back when Quirinius was Governor of Syria).  Do these dusty old words have what it takes to lighten our darkness?  To inject the thrill of hope into our weary world and our sinful lives?  To cause us to lift up our eyes with the shepherds and “fear not?”

          I know every chapter and verse of the Christmas gospel, like every branch on my old Christmas tree.  There are no surprises.  But every year anew it is a great and mighty wonder:  Will Mary believe the angel’s unbelievable message that she should be the mother of God?  Will Joseph set aside his doubts and take Mary to be his wife, and faithfully raise a Son who is not his son?  Will angels fill the starry sky with song?  Will those stinky shepherds set aside their fear, leave their sheep, go to Bethlehem and the manger and the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes?  Will Mary invite us all to ponder all these things in our hearts?

          And every year I am deeply moved to discover how these good tidings of great joy become even better and ever greater.  Our hearts may have no room for Jesus; but Jesus has come to make room for you in His eternal kingdom.  God’s love for us stands like a champion once again in this sacred space, on this holy night.  The Savior’s love for sinners—His thirst for our redemption—it is as real as the tree that stands behind me tonight.  And the wood of this tree is as real as the wood of the cross on which Jesus stretched out His arms of love to save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray.  Those strong arms—like evergreen branches—were able to bear all the weight of all the sin that would condemn us eternally.  Jesus bears it all away.  That good news lightens our dreary darkness and declares:  Let nothing you dismay.

          Christmas is always wonderfully the same; but it always makes us different.  The message never changes; but the message changes us.  The forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, the life everlasting—that 200 proof, glorious good news transforms us each year.  It changes us from sinful saplings into oaks of righteousness.  Jesus makes you ever-green with His everlasting life.  He makes your life “lovely.”  You are His branches, after all (John 15:5).  He gives you His faithfulness and you—you can take a lesson from the Tannenbaum.  Perhaps this is what the Psalmist had in mind when he wrote these words from Psalm 92:  The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.  They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God.  They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the Lord is upright.  The Lord is upright—just like the tree behind me.  In Him is life, and that life is the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

          O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum, wie treu sind deine Blätter!

          In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Let It Be

Jesu Juva

St. Luke 1:26-38                                                           

December 20, 2020

Advent 4B                              

 Dear saints of our Savior,

          When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.  And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me, Speaking words of wisdom, let it be . . . There will be an answer:  “Let it be.”

          And so it is that “mother Mary” comes to us on this Fourth Sunday in Advent.  Is it possible that a song from the Beatles can help unpack the good news of this Sunday?  Well, for now, let’s just say, “Nothing will be impossible with God.”

          Of course, Mary didn’t just say, “Let it be.”  Hers wasn’t a “well, whatever,” response.  Mary’s answer to the angel was this:  Let it be to me according to your word.  A more important answer is hard to come up with.  Let it be to me according to your word.  Quite frankly, we should have those words chiseled onto our Christmas ornaments and wrapped around our wreathes.  Mary’s words are much, much more than words of wisdom.  They are words of faith.  They are Mary’s “yes” and Mary’s great “Amen” to what the Angel Gabriel had told her.  Without Mary’s words of faith there would have been no Christmas—no Word becoming flesh—no Bethlehem birth.  The whole New Testament hinges on the response of a teenage girl from up north in no-place Nazareth:  Let it be.  Let it be to me according to your word.

          But let’s back up for a minute and take it from the top.  St. Luke tells us that all this happened in the “sixth month.”  Now the “sixth month” here doesn’t refer to June; it refers to an old woman named Elizabeth who is already “six months” along in her miraculous pregnancy when her much younger relative, Mary, gets a visit from Gabriel.  Old Elizabeth and Zechariah conceived a child simply because God said so.  And a bride-to-be is busy addressing her wedding invitations in Nazareth when she’s greeted by Gabriel who says, “Guess what?  You will give birth to the Son of God.”  Elizabeth conceives in her seniority; Mary conceives in her virginity.  Nothing is impossible with God.

          Today’s Holy Gospel tells us of that precise moment in the history of the world when God’s love could wait no longer—when not another day would pass before God’s great plan to save you began to take shape as a tiny embryo in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Because we are sinful from birth—sinful from the time our mothers conceived us—it was absolutely necessary for the Savior to take your place starting there—in the womb.  Your redemption was finished, fulfilled and completed at the cross; but it began in earnest when Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man.

          Gabriel is God’s messenger—a five-star general in the angel army.  Gabriel speaks “in the stead and by the command” of the Lord.  And God’s Word addresses Mary in a very peculiar way:  Greetings, O favored one.  That’s how the English Standard Version renders it.  Hail, Mary, full of grace is how the old Latin Bible renders it.  But however you translate it, what it means is:  She who has been

shown grace, or, she who has passively been given grace.  Mary may have been full of grace, but it wasn’t grace that she had earned, achieved, or merited.  God had already been at work in her life for a long time.  Mary was highly favored—not because she was sinless (she wasn’t)—but because God had given her His grace as a gift.  (Which, by the way, is also what God has done in you and for you—which is why you also are highly favored.)

          Now, with everything going on, it’s easy to zip right past the trifecta of miracles going on in this text.  And these might just be the three greatest miracles in the history of miracles.  I’ve already mentioned the virgin birth.  That’s huge.  Jesus is conceived by the Holy Spirit—not by Joseph or any other man.  Never had such a conception happened before, nor has it happened since.  There’s only one miraculous virgin birth in the whole history of the world.  The second miracle here is the incarnation—God becoming man.  Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; Hail the incarnate deity!  That’s another high voltage, one-of-a-kind miracle.  But let me tell you the biggest miracle in this terrific trifecta:  Mary believed!  Mary believed what the angel said.  Mary said “yes.”  Or, to use the phrase that pays:  Let it be.  Let it be to me according to your word.

          It sounds a little convoluted in English.  It’s not the most elegant phrase.  Nobody’s going to write a Christmas carol called, “Let it be to me according to your word.”  But what it means, in effect, is “Yes.  Amen.  So shall it be.”  It’s truly unthinkable that Mary would have said “no.”  But her “yes”—that “yes” is the biggest miracle of all.

          Mary believed.  Mary trusted.  Mary had faith.  How much Mary really understood about what was happening is debatable.  Whether she fully comprehended all the profound theological implications of that moment is doubtful.  St. Luke reports that Mary was “greatly troubled” when Gabriel appeared, and she was probably just as troubled after the angel left.  Mary had no way of knowing what exactly would transpire in the next thirty-three years.  But Mary had faith in what God had told her.  She believed that God was with her.  She said, “Let it be.”

          Can you say that?  Can you add your voice to Mary’s amen?  The Lord had a plan and a promise for Mary.  And He has a plan and a promise for you too.  From a human perspective that plan might not always seem attractive.  God’s plans for you are rarely neat and tidy and without complications.  (His plan for Mary certainly wasn’t.)  In fact, God’s plans for you might sometimes leave you “greatly troubled.” 

          Sometimes God’s plans conflict with your plans.  And when that happens—when your plan and God’s plan collide—well, your plans might just come crashing down at the worst possible time.  God’s plan for you often involves doing things you would rather not do:  shouldering the cross like Jesus, suffering like Jesus, submitting like Jesus, confessing your sins, forgiving your enemies, loving the unlovable, being faithful to God in what you say and what you do.  I suspect that your plans took a bit of hit in 2020.  But can you—will you—say “yes” God’s plan for your life, believing like Mary that the Lord is with you, come plague or pestilence?

          But remember, the Lord comes to you with more than a plan, but also a promise.  It’s the same promise He gave to Mary:  The Lord is with you.  Do you believe it?  No matter how badly you have fumbled God’s plan for your life—no matter how often you have sinfully said “no” to God’s clear word—no matter how many times you’ve pursued your plans at the expense of God’s plan for you—I bring you good tidings of great joy. 

          I don’t look much like an angel, but the Lord has sent me to do Gabriel’s job: to proclaim that the Lord is with you.  True God, begotten of the Father from eternity and true man born of the virgin Mary—He is your Lord and He is with you!  The Jesus in whom God was reconciling sinners to Himself—the Jesus who spread out His arms of love on a crucifixion cross—the Jesus who bounded out of the grave very early on the first day of the week—the Jesus whose kingdom will have no end—THIS Jesus, the Son of Mary, is with you.  He is for you, and not against you.

          In your baptism the Holy Spirit has come upon you.  God has been at work in you with His grace for a long time now.  And this is why you—like Mary—have found favor with God.  In Jesus your sins are all forgiven.  When it comes to His grace, you’re full of it.  And this amazing grace which so far has carried you through many dangers, toils and snares, also enables you to say what Mary said—to say “yes” to God’s plan—to say “amen” to all His promises in your life.

          Like Mary, you may not understand exactly where God is leading you, or why.  You may not perfectly comprehend all the theological implications of this moment.  You may leave here today feeling more troubled than when you arrived.  But that’s okay.  The Lord is with you.  He has a plan for you—a plan to give you peace and life that lasts forever.  Nothing is impossible for Him.  And if that’s true, then there’s nothing more to say—except for those words of wisdom from the mother of God, “Let it be.  Let it be to me according to your word.”  Blessed is she among women; and blessed is the fruit of her womb, Jesus.

          In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.