Ordinarily Sacred

Ordinarily Sacred Luke 1:26-38; 2:4-7 Now, do those two words go together: ordinary and sacred? If something is ordinary, can it be sacred, and would we call something sacred if it were ordinary? Well, remember a wedding, yours or someone else’s. You may have been at a church with a pastor officiating, invoking the presence and name of God to bless the proceedings, the couple and the rest of their lives together. Was it sacred? Was it an ordinary event? Yes to both questions. With God in attendance, with us being in His holy space, a sanctuary, with our asking God to be present today, tomorrow and always, that makes a special though ordinary event as sacred as we humans can. Now, consider a birthing, usually a follow-up to the marriage ceremony some months or years later, though it could be before the event in these days. Birth is also an ordinary event but very special event indeed; some might even think of it as a miracle; and that it is as well. At Christmas we are all called to remember and nurture the birth of the Christ Child in our own lives, to cradle the image of a manger scene come from heaven, to wrap our arms around others, and offer the world the gift of the miraculous power of an ordinary birth. Many manger scenes show Mary as a figure down on her knees, a look of saintly adoration on her face, with her arms held up praising the Lord. While that gesture is probably meant to show Mary's adoration and worship of the Christ Child, it tends to give her a look of surprise and gives the scene an unnatural image. It is as if she has somehow just stumbled across this newborn infant lying in the straw-filled manger. And Joseph, well, he has this second-row placement with an aloof kind of presence, a stalwart-looking figure and looks rather stoic about the whole affair. Now, I ask you, how many new parents have you seen react to the arrival of their first child in such a fashion? How many mothers, who have just given birth, could get up from a dirt floor, turn around and kneel, even if they wanted to? A far more authentic and emotional response of this little family's first moments together would probably have Mary holding the child with Joseph standing by her with a "goofy, new father" grin on his face. If there is any time when the real First Family should be pictured in a hands-on relationship, it is at Christmas, for this is the occasion when God became hands-on with us. How can completely ordinary events, circumstances, get raised to a higher power? How does the ordinary become sacred? In fact, what is a sacrament, really? By definition, it is when you "bestow the highest significance upon the ordinary things of this world: bread, wine, water, touch, breath and words," as philosopher 2 Walker Percy argues. The more ordinary an object or being, the more faith is required to perceive its sacred potential and miraculous qualities. Mary was "ordinarily sacred." Who was more ordinary than Mary? She was a simple, unassuming peasant, teen-aged woman from nowhere-Nazareth? But it is her very ordinariness that provides such a perfect personality for the extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit in her life. It was in her quiet, unremarkable, day-today life that Mary "found favor with God." Seeing Mary with halos or on her knees worshiping the newborn Jesus, as though He were some tiny deity that had magically materialized before her face, may speak to our lack of faith in the possibility of ordinary sacredness and ordinary miracles. Think about it. Why do we need to have Mary somehow disconnected from her baby? What we need to envision is an ordinary Mary looking pale and worn out as though she had just delivered a baby in a manger, of all places. She was disheveled and exhausted but with her face transformed by joy and love as she snuggles the tiny baby Jesus tightly against her. Mary didn't gaze in respectful reverence at her newborn child. She cuddled him, counted all his fingers and toes like we all did, chuckled at the hair he did or didn't have, caressing the softness of his skin and breathing in the smell of His body, like any mother does. This is the true miracle of Christmas. Jesus was not some glow-in-the-dark Christ Child. Jesus, the very God incarnate, was a real, live, ordinary, crying, cooing, sleeping, eating, wetting, smelly baby. And just as with all babies, His greatest need was to be held in human arms, touched by human hands, soothed by human words of love and reassurance. At Christmas we are all called to birth and nurture and cradle Christ in our own lives, to wrap our arms around our faith in Him. When we birth and cradle Christ in our own ordinary lives by faith, we find our arms wrapping around others who need Christ birthed and cradled and nurtured in their lives. A classic story of this holy season perfectly illustrates this miracle of being ordinarily sacred. A soldier was concluding sentry duty on Christmas morning during WWII. It had been his custom, in other years, to attend worship in his home church on Christmas Day, but here in the outlying areas of London, it was not possible. So, with some of his buddies, the soldiers walked down the road that led into the city just as dawn was breaking. Soon the soldiers came upon an old gray stone building over whose main entrance were carved the words, "Queen Anne's Orphanage." They decided to knock and see what kind of celebration was taking place inside. In response to their knock, a matron came and explained that the children were war orphans whose parents had been killed in the bombings. 3 The soldiers went inside just as the children were tumbling out of their beds. There was no Christmas tree in the corner and no presents. The soldiers moved around the room, wishing the children a Merry Christmas and giving as gifts whatever they had in their pockets: a stick of chewing gum, a Life Saver, a nickel or a dime, a pencil, a good luck charm. One soldier noticed a little fellow standing alone in the corner of the room. He looked a lot like his own nephew back home, so he approached and asked, "And you, little guy, what do you want for Christmas?" The lad replied, "Will you hold me?" With tears welling up in his eyes, the soldier picked up the boy, nestled him in his arms, and held him close. Emmanuel means "God with us." But more than that, Emmanuel means God does not keep us at arm's distance. God is with us with open arms and with His hands upon us. If Christ is born in us this Christmas, we too will reach with open arms to those in need; we too will have a hands-on relationship with life and love and with one another. Got another story for Christmas… a powerful story from a documentary movie, As If It Were Yesterday, by Myriam Abramowicz and Esther Hoffenberg. It is about the Belgian Christians who sheltered 4000 Jewish children during World War II to save them from Nazi death camps. One six-year-old Jewish boy was placed with a Christian family. After a time, they said they could no longer keep the boy. They said, "He's a thief." Those making the child placements were distressed and one went to visit the family. "How can a sixyear-old boy be a thief? That's impossible ...." "Yes, he's a thief. Our little girl got a manger for Christmas, with the little Jesus and the rest of whatever there is. And he stole the little Jesus. Our daughter is very upset. She won't eat." So the placement worker took him aside. "Listen, you know that the Nazis want to kill us all. And here you are with good people trying to save you. Why did you steal?" "Sir, I didn't steal." "You'd better tell me. Nothing will happen to you." "I have taken Jesus to hide Him." "What do you mean?" "I know little Jesus is a Jew. The Germans could take Him. So I hid Him to save Him." The boy was wanting to save the One who came to save him. Well, the Germans are our friends now and we no longer need to hide Jesus from the world. Quite the contrary, we need to “Go Tell It on the Mountain, over the hills and everywhere, that Jesus Christ is born.” Dietrich Bonheoffer, Christian martyr at the end of WWII said, “In the child of Bethlehem, the life of the world that is to come - has come into the life of the world that is.” May we carry the life that is Jesus Christ into the world that is ours today? Merry Christmas to one and all.