Settled in 1736

God Bless Us Everyone

Date: December 24, 2004

Scripture: Luke and Matthew/Christmas Story

A friend of mine is a priest in Chicago . Last year, instead of the normal Christmas Pageant, they decided to do a shortened version of Dickens' Christmas Carol. Dozens of parishioners were involved. Sets were constructed. They rehearsed and rehearsed. Scrooge, Marley's ghost, Bob Cratchit – all played by kids – had their lines down cold.

The night of the production, everything went off like clockwork. When they reached the final scene, with the Cratchit family and Scrooge gathered together, my friend told me he breathed a huge sigh of relief. They had done it – made it to the end.

Almost.

Because the one thing that seemingly couldn't go wrong … did. The child who played Tiny Tim, who had but one tiny line, a line that we all know by heart, the immortal words that finish the story of A Christmas Carol , panicked. A stricken look came over his face and there was heart-pounding deadly silence in the church.

Realizing, at this point, that he had to say something , this unique interpreter of the role of Tiny Tim held his crutch aloft and shouted:

“Watch it or you can poke your eye out with this thing!”

Now while there was, undoubtedly, some truth in this observation, it was an unexpected ray of light on the subject. The congregation pondered this thought for some time. Until, finally, from the back of the church a voice was heard:

God bless us everyone! This was followed by thunderous and relieved applause.

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Tonight is amateur night.

But by amateurs, I am not referring to our angels and shepherds, and our donkey and our Mary and our Joseph and our Wise Men. No. They will tell this story tonight wonderfully and perfectly. In part because of their innocence. And in part because this story is so resilient.

By amateurs, I am referring to the original cast.

Mary was an amateur at being a mother. She was a teenage girl about to experience birth for the first time.

Joseph was an amateur. He was a man who, on the advice of an angel, married a woman already with child. He was blindly going simply where his next step would take him.

The shepherds were amateurs at conversing with angels. They fell to the ground in fear, not knowing what to do.

But somehow in the midst of this very human, very amateurish group, God unobtrusively entered the world. Divinity and humanity mingled in an event so extraordinary that it has reverberated for more than two thousand years in story.

And story is how we learn about God.

Theologians have written countless millions of words on proofs for God or the nature of the Trinity or the humanity and divinity of Jesus.

But we construct our faith out of stories. The parable of The Prodigal Son. The multiplication of the loaves and fishes. Jesus calming the storm. The Garden of Gethsemane . The Passion. All of these are stories in which some element of our faith is contained.

And so tonight, we tell again the ancient, but always-new story of The Birth of Jesus. The angels and shepherds you see will one day be fully grown. They may be bringing their own angels and shepherds to this very sanctuary.

If so, then we will have done our job. Which is, in the end, to keep the story alive. To keep the flame burning.

So, God bless us everyone.