Sermon Title: "Quiet At Christmas"
Date: December 7, 2008
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Isaiah 40:1-11

Each Monday evening at home, as part of my day-off homework, I study the lectionary readings suggested for the next Sunday.  I am not obligated to preach on them, but I often find in these selections a theme appropriate for the season and, hopefully, a sermon.  They consist of four readings:  Old Testament, Psalm, Epistle and Gospel.  Some churches use all four each Sunday.  My pattern is to select just one.

Last Monday night, I kept coming back to the selection from Isaiah and its poignant words which begin, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.  Speak tenderly to Jerusalem…”  Isn’t that how we approach someone we wish to comfort?  We don’t yell, “Settle down!  Be quiet now!  Be calm!”  Anyone knows that to quiet an upset child or to settle a raucous crowd, you speak quietly and calmly to them.

I re-read the lesson a second, then a third time.  Something was connecting.  What was it?  Then I remembered.  It was something I had read in the newspaper just that Monday morning, from one of my favorite sources of material dealing with the human condition:

“Dear Abby:

       “Now that the year-end holidays are here, I find myself once again in the sometimes difficult position of having to explain to acquaintances and co-workers whey I don’t celebrate them.

“I am single.  My parents died many years ago, and I have no family.  My only surviving sibling and his wife are both alcoholics who drink to excess over the holidays and cause tension in their family.  I have attended Al-Anon meetings, and because I refused to look the other way while they were drinking, I was cut off.

      “Co-workers take time off at Christmas, but I take mine at other times of the year.  Over time, I have found that I would rather spend a so-called holiday catching up on correspondence, taking a walk, reading a good book or sewing.  Outside of work or professional organizations, I do not do anything about the year-end holidays.  I understand the religious and historical significance of these celebrations and keep them in my heart, but do not observe them in a visible matter.  This is my choice.

      "When people ask me what I’m doing for the holidays, it is an awkward moment.  How can I gracefully explain that I choose to keep the holidays in my heart only and enjoy the day as a small vacation for myself?”

Now here’s the clincher.  The letter to this nationally syndicated columnist is signed “Long Beach Loner.”  That could be a person known to you, working in your office, a member of your professional organization, even sitting here amongst us this morning.

Abby’s reply:  “Dear Loner:  You need no advice from me.  Your last sentence expresses your sentiments beautifully.”

Isn’t it true that this season can be a hectic, busy, even loud time?  Parties are not quiet affairs.  I was invited to march in last night’s Belmont Shore Parade, and attend a dinner party afterwards.  Peggy and I debated replying earlier in the week, looked at our calendar for the coming week, and decided we needed a quiet evening at home.  Little did we know we’d both be feeling not up to par the past few days, so it’s a good thing we declined.

For some people, including the “Long Beach Loner,” holidays like Christmas can be sad times, or ones in which they would rather reflect on memories of better Christmases past.  Perhaps there has been a death in the family, or some other form of family separation, relocation, illness or loss that makes happiness, frivolity and party-going just seem inappropriate.  It can leave one sad to be exposed to such merriment.

A number of churches have a quiet, meditative evening service during Advent around the theme of a Blue Christmas, realizing that for some folk that is their mood.  We tried our version of it last month at the All Saints’ Sunday vesper service, where persons would light a candle in memory of someone who had been close to them.

Isaiah offers a word of comfort, of hope to the ancient Israelites.  His hearers in the sixth century B.C. appear to be captives who had languished under Babylonian rule for some extended period.  This prophet preached comfort and the hope of the return of God’s people to God’s land, as well as a universal belief in one God, that bespoke comfort to all people.  For this reason, his work, found in chapters 40-55, is sometimes called the “Book of the Consolation of Israel.”  He speaks tenderly that their warfare, their penitence, their exile is over. 

Don’t we want that same, quiet assurance from God this Christmas?  Maybe you have felt exiled, estranged, off the road, abandoned, wandering aimlessly.  What still, small voice do you need to hear to direct you back again?  Maybe it’s a face from the past.  Maybe it’s an echo evoked from deep within your soul upon hearing again a carol this month that you haven’t heard since childhood.  Maybe it was a coincidence that may not have been merely a coincidence.

For I believe God comes quietly, and we must make quiet times amidst our joyous and traditional and anticipated Christmas celebrations to let the Christ come in.

A few days ago in my car I was listening to a CD of Christmas organ arrangements by Diane Bish.  It’s a favorite, and I’ve heard it dozens of times.  But this time, perhaps in tune to this sermon theme, I noticed something I hadn’t before.  She played a very lovely, quiet, quite sublime arrangement of Silent Night.  It evoked just the kind of feeling we want to think surrounded the stable or cave that night when Jesus was born. 

Then the organist began to modulate; the tempo changed as she added stops to what she was playing.  Then she segued into a fast and glorious arrangement of Angels We Have Heard on High.  The Gloria refrain resonated from the speakers in each corner of the car.

As I reflected on what I had just heard, I thought, maybe it was a quiet night in Bethlehem.  Our manger scenes always lead us to believe it was.  Forget about all those other people teeming into town for the census.  Luke tells us Jesus was born and some cow stall served as his first crib.  Maybe his mother Mary laid nearby in exhaustion; Joseph knelt, his rough hands like a giant’s against the infant’s tiny wet fingers.  The animals around made their usual evening sounds as they settled in for the night.  God had come quietly into the stable that night.

Yet is was time to spread the good news!  The organ swells as a great chorus of angels dance like the Aurora Borealis across the sky, giving poor, startled, sleepy shepherds a sight they had never before experienced.

And so, for centuries since, Christians throughout the world have celebrated Christ’s birth with excitement, with a child’s anticipation, with franticness, with wistful memories, and sometimes, with melancholy.

Raymond Veh writes:  “Walking near a store window, we heard a small boy ask his mother, ‘When will Christmas come?’  Who among us does not count the days until Christmas?

“The answer to this question began in the heart and mind of God in the quiet, unbroken calm of eternity.  The world began, the human race stumbled and fell, kings and princes rose into glory and fell into dust—and then one day God placed the Child in a manger and changed the course of the world.  This Child is our hope, in Him is our faith.

“As Christmas comes [closer] now, we must know that He alone can make the world a better world.  Christ is the world’s Savior.  Christ alone can reply to the question of our childlike hearts, ‘When will Christmas come?’  This is the reassuring answer:  ‘It came with Jesus’ birth . . .’” (Raymond M. Veh, in One Hundred Meditations for Advent and Christmas, Nashville:  The Upper Room, 1994, p. 16.)

Will you find the quiet at the heart of Christmas to welcome him in?