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The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ

"Think Globally; Act Locally"

The Rev. Stephen Elkins-Williams

Joy to the world! The Lord is come.

Joy to the world, the whole world. All over the world Christmas is being celebrated again today. All over God’s world, a diverse world, a broken world, an amazing world, a needy world, a war-torn world, a shrinking world, we join with believers of many Christian stripes and with semi-believers and with hopers who do not dare to believe, and celebrate a turning point in all human history, the birth of God’s Son. Alienated from our Creator and needing redemption and reconciliation, finally two thousand years ago we were given hope and new life through the gift of this child. Amazingly God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that through him we might be reconciled with God and with one another. Christmas is the celebration of that wondrous gift of love to the whole world.

All of us have very particular memories of Christmases in our past and very strong ideas of how we should celebrate this feast. No other day of the year brings up near so many reminiscences nor carries so many expectations for so many of us. We are here tonight perhaps because this is how we have celebrated Christmas for decades or perhaps because this service is as close as we can come to past celebrations or perhaps because we are determined that this Christmas will be a new start for us. We have particular ways and needs associated with Christmas and that is how it should be. We are born into a particular family and culture and place and time, and all of these shape our history and our customs and our perspectives.

Those particularities, however, should not disconnect us from others who are different from us in culture or place or practices. Their daily worlds and their approaches to life and their celebrations of Christmas are as real to them as ours are to us. Jesus is God’s gift to them as well, whether they worship in a different church tonight or inhabit our shelter or have different color skin or live in Honduras or Botswana or Iraq or whether they are refugees or immigrants in this or another country. All are part of God’s world and all receive the same gift. The hymns we sing here tonight find their echoes all over the world, whether or not they utilize the same melodies or words or accompanying instruments. Joy to the world, the whole world; the Lord is come.

In our December parish newsletter, we printed stories of some of our international and local partners’ celebrations of Christmas. We learned that at El Hogar in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, each boy or family contributes something to the huge crèche in front of their church. According to the priest there, Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus “are surrounded by a town that contains houses of various scales, cows of various sizes, cars, churches, and lots of others things,” including last year a helicopter parked near the manger! The boys and any of their families who can come, gather for a lively, energetic service on Christmas Eve, and at midnight firecrackers announce Jesus’ birth, followed by joyful dancing.

We also saw in Cross Roads moving pictures of children at the Kwasa Center in Springs, South Africa, fully engaged in acting out the Christmas story. Costumes consist mainly of headgear: small hand towels with headbands for the many shepherds, shredded tinsel tied around foreheads for the angels, and foil-covered crowns for the three small kings, who show their respect for the infant Jesus by presenting their treasured gifts wearing white gloves.

We read that the men down the street at our local IFC shelter do have a Christmas tree and that their meals today are a bit more festive. This year, a new effort has made to see that each resident receives at least one small gift, e.g. a razor or a hat or some gloves. A mile or so from here at Kehillah, a Jewish synagogue, the fledgling congregation of the Episcopal Church of the Advocate, which we continue to support, celebrates both a Christmas Eve and a Christmas Day service, both connected to festive meals. This year they have a new crèche of carved wooden figures from Haiti, where they have partnered with a congregation and school. At the end of the second service, of course, they will take it and any other temporary decorations down and take them away, since they do not yet have permanent space of their own.

As we celebrate this joyous liturgy of Christmas with our own customs and rituals, it is good for us to unite ourselves with others throughout God’s world as we offer our praise and thanks to God. On this feast which we share with so many of God’s children, we are called to widen our vision and to strengthen our resolve to live every day cognizant of our relationships with all these others. We who have been blessed with so much and who live in such peaceful and prosperous surroundings have a special opportunity to connect with others both nearby and far away, who do not. We have heard the phrase before, “Think globally; act locally.” Perhaps Christmas gives new meaning to that phrase. After all, on the first Christmas two thousand years ago, in the city of Bethlehem in Judea, through two Israelites named Mary and Joseph, did not God do the same? “Joy to the world! The Lord is come.”

© 2007: Chapel of the Cross