December 24, 2013 | Christmas Eve | 8:30 and 11:00 p.m.

A Christmas Eve Sermon

Calum I. MacLeod
Executive Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

It is a great pleasure to welcome you all to Christmas Eve at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. We are glad you are with us. If you come here often or if you have not been here in a long time, you are very welcome. If the last time you were with us was Easter, that’s alright; if you’re going to do church twice, then Easter and Christmas Eve are the best times to do it. And if you want to whip out your iPhone and your calendar, it’s April 20, 2014, the next time we’ll see you back here.

This is an historic evening at Fourth Presbyterian Church: for the first time in our history we are live-streaming on the Internet video of a worship service from this congregation. So to those who are joining us from who knows where, a warm Chicago welcome to you all.

Once again we return to Bethlehem, that place that is in so many ways familiar and comfortable and yet is also a place of wonder and miracle, of angels, of God erupting into time, of Mary and Joseph. Mary and Joseph—now they had a stable relationship. Get it? I know, I know, it’s Christmas Eve after all, but before the stable, they had the journey—the journey to Bethlehem. One of the things I’ve reflected on in Christmases past is the fact that nobody seems to be at home on Christmas. Everyone, it seems, is on a journey—Mary and Joseph, the Wise Men, the shepherds going from their fields to find the child in the manger, the angels traveling back and forth.

Let me invite you this evening to be on a journey this Christmas. I invite you to take an imaginative journey tonight—not to Bethlehem, but a journey on an ordinary Chicago bus. Imagine you are sitting on a bus on Christmas Eve. This is an ordinary single-decker Chicago Transit Authority bus going on an ordinary journey to your home. There are only three other people on the bus: a woman with two children, sitting near the front. It is about 4:00 in the afternoon of Christmas Eve. It’s a cold day, of course, and this makes you glad to be in the warmth. You are enjoying the journey, daydreaming, looking out of the window, not being disturbed by anyone or anything. The bus stops and out get the mother and two children. The bus waits. On comes an old woman, not very tall but quite stout, wearing an old brown coat, a cheap, green head scarf. In her arms she’s carrying a bundle of something or other. You can’t quite see it until she pays her fare and comes up the bus intending to sit across the passage from you.

You look at her closely as she makes to sit down. Her brown coat; her cheap, green head scarf with a rose pattern on the borders; stout, straggly gray hair, which falls across her brow; and under her arm she carries a bundle of newspapers, evening newspapers. She looks around and sees you staring at her.

“Hello,” she says. And you say “hello” back. As you look at her, you see that she has a round face, weather-beaten, with two small, piercing, blue eyes, a smiling face made comical because when she speaks you see that her top front tooth is missing. She keeps looking at you, smiling. You feel you should say something, but you don’t know what. Then you nod at the bunch of newspapers under her arm, and assuming her to be a street vendor, you say, “Is that your full-time job?”

“Oh no, this is just a very small part of my job,” she says.

“So what do you do,” you ask, and she smiles. “I mean, what are you?” you ask.

And she smiles. “I’m an angel,” she replies. “Do not be afraid.”

Angels always say do not be afraid. And you feel that you want to snigger. You turn your head away to look out of the window, and then you turn it back and say quickly, “You’re a what?”

“I’m an angel,” she says.

“No you’re not!”

“Have you seen an angel before?” she asks.

“No, but . . .”

“No, but you haven’t seen an angel before—so you wouldn’t know one if you saw one. Sometimes angels get dressed up as wrestlers with sweatbands on their wrists. Sometimes they get dressed up like building surveyors and carry plumb lines in their hands, and sometimes they appear like old newspaper sellers with gray hair and teeth missing. We don’t always wear wings and halos, you know.”

You can hardly speak. Then you ask, “What are you doing here?”

“I’m doing what angels normally do,” she replies. “I’m bringing a message.”

“Who for?” you ask.

“For you.”

“For me? But from who?”

“From God.” And while you stand in total disbelief, the old woman puts her hand into her brown coat pocket and brings out a blue envelope. “Is this your name?” she asks, and she shows you the envelope, on which you see your name written. Your first name in clear handwriting.

“Yes,” you answer.

“Then, it’s for you.”

“What about?” you ask, and she says, “It’s the one thing you always forget and the one thing you’ll need to remember if you’re going to get anywhere in life.”

“Pardon?”

“It’s the one thing you always forget and the one thing you’ll need to remember if you are going to get anywhere in life.”

“Do you know what it says,” you ask.

“Yes—and maybe so do you.”

Then she stretches out her hand and gives you the blue envelope with your name on the front. You accept it and look at it in total confusion. You want to pinch yourself to make sure that it’s true. You look up again at the old woman, but she’s not there. The bus hasn’t stopped. It’s still moving, but she’s not there. So you’ve been having a daydream. And then you look at your hand, and there is still the blue envelope with your name and in it a message from God. “Something that you always forget . . .”—and you begin to wonder what it might be. What is it I always forget? Has it to do with prayers? Has it to do with church? Has it to do with that person you keep criticizing? Has it to do with some habit you know you have to kick? What is it you always forget?

You begin to get scared. Your hands shake a bit. If God knows everything, then what is written inside might be quite devastating. You look at the envelope again, and you tug at the corner until it opens. You put your finger inside and take out a card—a white card, The side you look at has nothing on it. The message from God must be on the other side. The thing you always forget—the thing you need to remember. You turn the card over. There are four words in clear handwriting: I, God, love you.

Is this what you forget? Is this what you have to remember, according to the angel’s message? You look again. I, God, love you. And the “you” is underlined. And that, my friends is the message of the angels then and now. It is what Christmas is all about. I, God, love you.

Let us pray.

Thank you, scandalous God, for giving yourself to the world, not in the powerful and extraordinary but in weakness and the familiar, in a baby, in bread and wine. Thank you for bringing us to Bethlehem, house of bread, where the empty are filled and the filled are emptied. Where the poor find riches and the rich recognize their poverty. Where all who kneel and hold out their hands know the love of God and are unstintingly fed. Amen.

This sermon is based on John Bell’s meditation “On the Bus” from the collection He Was In the World.