Now, just get settled and comfortable here. I'm really wound up! So this is going to be, you know, a big night. You might want to lie back at some point. What can I say?

You know, the feast of Christmas is so solemn and so powerful and so captivating that all through the centuries, from very early on, it's been surrounded by, and really overgrown, by myths and legends and amazing folklore. The ancients held that the cattle in the stable at midnight on Christmas knelt down, and the birds, out in the fields, sang all night long. And the trees and the plants, especially near the Jordan River, in the Jordan Valley, turned toward Bethlehem and bowed. We find it in ancient manuscripts.

We find it in old stories. We find it in Shadespeare, in Hamlet. He records it there. It was once believed that, at midnight on Christmas, the gates of Paradise opened and anyone dying through that hour went straight in. And children born during that midnight hour at Christmas had the power to see spirits and to command them their whole life long. And, at midnight (This is the one I love!) it was believed that animals out in the field, and all of our pets at home began to speak like humans. Now, the story is they spoke in Latin. That's why you didn't get it!

Now, we smile at those ancient legends and myths and stories, but we have spun our own version and created our own myths of the Christmas story. The first version that we have is really an annual argument. We have an argument and it goes on. It's more intense this year than most years, I think. We have an argument every year, whether to have a creche, a crib scene, in public places, or whether to have even a Christmas tree in public places. This year, I think, the crib was removed from the Lexington Green outside of Boston, and any sign of Christmas was removed from those running municipal buses in the Northwest. I heard someone describe this as "Once upon a time they took Christ out of Christmas. Now they want to take Christmas out of Christmas."

I mention it because I have very mixed feelings. My first feeling is, when they say "Take the tree down and the crib down in public places, tax-supported places," my first reaction is "Give me a break, you know.... What's this all about?" And my second reaction is, "Go for it!" because I'd like, for once, for us to leave Christmas to believers, those who find the celebration of Christmas something of significance, of wisdom and of value rather than something for marketing, for decorating and for fun. So I end up with mixed feelings. On one end, I say, "Boy! That's crazy. Why take all those things down?" And my other feeling is, "Take 'em down. Give them back to us! Give 'em back to believers, followers, disciples of Jesus, and let it go. Move it out of that public place!" But I'm mixed up on that one. I share that with you. But, that's one of the versions of Christmas that we live with, not in the ancient manuscripts, not in Shakespeare, in the old stories, but, if you read the newspapers, that's one of our versions, fighting over whether to have a crib scene or not. And you can quote Father Joyce at Christ the King. He doesn't know which! He doesn't know.... He doesn't know....

But the other thing I know something about, the other version we have is the commercialized, sanitized version of the Christmas story. And it's not just in the mall and on our Christmas cards, but we all yield to it, even in our own decorations in Church. We see Mary and Joseph as neat and in clean clothes. We see the shepherds. They are sweet and they are well-scrubbed. We see the animals and they are carefully and properly posed. We see the Wise Men and they are richly dressed with fabulous gifts. It looks a little more like a Radio City Music Hall Production than the First Christmas.

You see, the reality that the Gospel talks about and the images that the Gospel gives us to make a point are first of all, shepherds.... What were shepherds like?... the dregs of humanity. You would not want to be associated with them! They were regularly known as thieves. They could be hired for nothing else, and they were not to be trusted! The shepherds... And the magi... They were wise and they were well-off, but they were outsiders. They were foreigners. They dressed like foreigners. They talked like foreigners. They acted like foreigners, and they smelled like foreigners. And they certainly were not among the chosen people! And Mary and Joseph... It was not Ken and Barbie. They were poor peasants. They had traveled a long way. They were tired. They were dusty and they were dirty. And Bethlehem... Bethlehem was not Blackhawk. It was not even Pleasant Hill. It was a scruffy, no-account town! And the animals, the animals of the stable, they were not, as they are on my Christmas cards, groomed and sanitized. In other words, as you went into that stable, you had two things you had to do, hold your nose and watch your step. And the manger, where they put the Child Jesus, was not a crib from Toys R Us. It was a feeding trough for sloppy, dirty animals. The scene brought to you by the Gospels, and the reality preached to us about Jesus through that scene is not the scene of Hallmark and not a Disney production.

The point that the Gospel wants to make, and it is a point that is missed by commercialized and sanitized versions, is that God breaks through and He enters our world and walks with us where we are hurt, where we are broken, where we are panicked, where we are needy, not where we are at our best, but where we are at our worst. That's where God chooses to be and wants to be with us. The point the Gospel scene wants to make, and the mall and the Christmas card misses, is that God comes to nourish us in our brokenness and to feed our hungry spirits.

You know, the Child in the manger grew up and He didn't change a bit! The Gospel tells us that the grown-up Jesus spent time with the outcast and the poor, was known for hanging out with publicans and prostitutes and hypocrites, that the grown-up Jesus came to call sinners, not the justified. He touched lepers and He died on a cross between two thieves who were probably worse than that. They probably had been shepherds somewhere in their lives..... How's that for consistency?

Interesting story, written by Dostoevski, the great Russian writer... He writes in a short story called "The House of the Dead." It's about Christmas Day in a Siberian concentration camp. He says:

"It was a dingy little settlement among frozen wastelands. From the grim prison at one end of a single muddy street, the convicts peered through the barred windows at the small cathedral on a hill, on the other side of town. The bells rang merrily as that Christmas dawn arrived. And the villagers trooped in happy procession to the early church service. It was Christ's mass, Christmas, but not for us who are cut off from all humanity. The ragged prisoners wept, huddled together for comfort from the cold. Finally, however, when the very long and fancy Cathedral service was over, a priest came to the prison, set up a crude altar and began the service of worship. "Now God has come to us," the convicts shouted in surprised joy. "Oh, yes." replied the priest. "This is where He lives all year long. You see, He only goes over to the Cathedral once or twice a year, on special occasions."

Our God hangs out with us where we're hurting. The God of Christmas, the God of Jesus, and the God of the Gospels doesn't get dressed up for us and doesn't do magic for us, but walks with us and calls on us to walk with one another. Our God and the God of Christmas calls on us to hope, calls on us to mutual support, calls on us to know that we are loved, and calls on us to pass that message on. That's what we celebrate.

You peel away all the ancient legends and myths and stories, and you undo the sanitized version from Christmas cards and from the mall. And what you find is our God walks with us and calls us to hope and mutual support and to know that we're loved and, by the way we live and treat each other, to pass that message on. That's good news! That's worth celebrating and saying, "Merry Christmas!" Amen.