Just Stand There and Shine
a sermon by Claire Phillips-Thoryn
given on Sunday, December 17, 2006
at The First Parish in Lincoln
READINGS:
1. Isaiah 35:1-6, Luke 2:8-15, 1 John 1:4-5
Joy
The first Advent candle stands for hope – a light shining in the darkness. The second candle stands for love – it reminds us that God has loved us from the day we were born. This is the Third Sunday in Advent, and today’s candle is the pink one – and it stands for joy. It is called “the shepherds candle” because it reminds us of the joy the shepherds felt when an angel told them that a Savior had been born. These verses are from James, Isaiah, Romans, and John:
The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and bloom. The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert.
And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them. And the angel said to them, “Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you news of great joy. For to you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, who is the Messiah. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger."
Then a whole chorus of angels appeared, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, and good will among all people.” When the angels left, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.”
We light the pink candle so that our joy may be complete. This is the message we have heard and proclaim to you: that God is light and in God there is no darkness at all.
2. Our second reading is an excerpt from the memoir A Girl named Zippy: Growing up Small in Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel. Mooreland, Indiana is a town of 300 people, and Kimmel—or Zippy, as her family called her—was raised in this poor but friendly and quirky town. Her family had very little money, but she made her own fun. Zippy is creative, troublemaking, spirited, and full of wonder. She writes:
For years I was thrilled to receive one present from Santa, although when I was four I discovered that one present doesn’t leave a child much to fall back on. That year my parents bought me a fluffy silver dog that had a music box inside. In the sequence of pictures taken just after we opened our gifts I am holding my dog close to me, obviously thrilled by it; in the next my sister is holding it and I am looking at it with my head cocked, confused; in the last the dog is completely gone and I am playing with the box it came in. I have just finished sneezing, and the fur of the dog, which came off in handfuls when touched, is lying all around me on the floor.
I was always grateful for my present because of something my dad told me. I asked him what he liked to play with when he was a little boy. He managed to look both wistful and brave.
“Oh, honey, we didn’t really have any toys when I was a little boy.” He went on to explain that when he was a child there was A Depression, which I understood perfectly well because sometimes my own mother didn’t get dressed for days at a time, and would only sit in a corner of the couch reading science fiction novels and eating pork rinds.
“Well,” I pursued, flabbergasted, “what about at Christmastime?”
He looked off into the distance, back into his long, long walk to school. “I was happy just to get an orange.”
This was the most insane piece of news I had ever heard in my life. An orange was the opposite of a present; it was no different than saying, “I was happy just to get a baked potato,” or “I was happy just to have a floor.”
… I have since discovered that all men of a certain age tell this story, and they give themselves away by always using the same fruit. I have yet to meet the father who will look his child in the eye and say, “I was happy just to get some seedless grapes.” But whatever the motive for this generational fiction, it works. So what if my stuffed dog molted and gave me an upper respiratory illness? At least Santa had remembered me, and at least I didn’t have to eat it.
And the angel said to them, “Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you news of great joy.”
I mentioned to a few people that after giving a sermon on Immigration, and then a sermon on War, I am especially glad to be preaching on Joy this third week in Advent. Merry Christmas to you all.
The shepherds were keeping watch over their flock and angels appeared. The three wise kings saw a star and followed it. A baby lay in a manger, on straw and wrapped in rough fabric, surrounded by the smells and sounds of barn animals, looked after by two love-struck peasants. It’s such a familiar story, it’s so familiar that it is hard to remember how wild, how crazy those early Christians were to suggest that God could become a baby, a small, vulnerable, defenseless baby, and that this baby could be refused not just the finest home but even a simple room in a cheap hotel, and find himself in a barn. Insanity. Madness. Miracle. For many the power of the Christian story is in Easter, the death and Resurrection. For me it is in Christmas. The beautiful, powerful myth of God taking on flesh and blood, of becoming human at our most powerless and vulnerable. God, showing humankind how truly miraculous the very beings of our bodies are, how beautiful and precious our limbs, our breath, our tastebuds, our ears, our hands—how precious and blessed our bodies really are. Some of you may be familiar with the Christian prayer that says: “Lord, I am not worthy to receive your gifts.” In the story of Christmas, God says to us: Humans, I hope I am worthy to receive your gifts.
I have my own mental image of the manger scene, born out of my upbringing as a Unitarian Universalist. In first grade we took a class called “Haunting Houses” where we we explored the different meanings of the word “home.” We started with our first home, our mother’s wombs, and moved towards the Christmas story as winter approached. As we imagined Jesus’s home in the manger, we were given the opportunity to provide animals for the church’s manger scene that would be displayed during Christmas Sunday. Perhaps I should say, our parents were given the opportunity to become very skilled in using an Exacto knife, because these animals were made out of large pieces of cardboard that first graders couldn’t cut. There were some big patterns for us to trace, paint, and decorate: sheep, horses, cows. The woman teaching this Sunday school class has taught it every year for 35 years, and in those years she has seen some changes. Now alongside the horses and sheep are ducks, peacocks, foxes, giraffes. One year I remember a particularly large killer whale, worshipping Jesus at the manger. And so I learned that the Lion shall lie down with the lamb, and the killer whale shall lie down with the giraffe. “All God’s creatures have a place in the choir.”1
Here we have a Christmas pageant, where all the children have a chance to act out this crazy miracle story. The writer Sue Monk Kidd, who wrote the best-seller The Secret Life of Bees, has a story about her daughter’s part in their church’s pageant. She writes:
When my daughter was small she got the dubious part of the Bethlehem star in a Christmas play. After her first rehearsal she burst through the door with her costume, a five-pointed star lined in shiny gold tinsel designed to drape over her like a sandwich board. “What exactly will you be doing in the play?” I asked her.
“I just stand there and shine,” she told me. I’ve never forgotten that response.2
Christmas is our chance to just stand there and shine. In the Christmas story we are reminded of the gift of our beautiful, vulnerable bodies, and that we don’t have to do anything to be special, we don’t have to do anything but be ourselves to be loved by God.
For so the children come
And so they have been coming.
No angels herald their beginnings.
No prophets predict their future courses.
No wisemen see a star to show where
to find the babe that will save humankind.
Yet each night a child is born is a holy night.
The Jesus story of the New Testament has some big holes in it. We start at his birth and end up 33 years later, during the last few eventful years of his life. That means we get to use our imagination. Who was Jesus at 3, at 6, at 10? The miracle of birth is matched by that miracle of growing, by the miracle stories our children teach us as they grow and we grow with them.
The late Unitarian minister Clarke Dewey Wells has a story about being shocked out of his usual routine and into a new and surprising place of joy by his young child. He writes,
Several years ago and shortly after twilight our 3 1/2 year old tried to gain his parents’ attention to a shining star.
The parents were busy with time and schedules, the irritabilities of the day and other worthy pre-occupations. “Yes, yes, we see the star – now I’m busy, don’t bother me.” On hearing this the young one launched through the porch door, fixed us with a fiery gaze and said, “You be glad at that star!”
… It was one of those rare moments when you get everything you need for the good of your soul – reprimand, disclosure and blessing. It was especially good for me, that surprising moment, because I am one who responds automatically and negatively to the usual exhortations to “pause-and-be-more-appreciative-of-life.” Fortunately, I was caught grandly off guard.
Sometimes, we are so busy, or sad, or anxious, or worried, that we don’t feel we can be glad at that star. We don’t think we have it in us even to just stand there and shine, let alone get into the Christmas spirit. Sometimes it all just seems too hard. But as William Blake wrote, “Joy and Woe are woven fine,” and perhaps we can get swept out of our own holiday melancholy by a little bit of unexpected joy.
We already met Haven “Zippy” Kimmel in the second reading, but her Christmas story just begins there. Zippy’s family is struggling. Little Zippy sleeps on a cot in the den because their house is so small, and the living room is kept very cold in the winter to save money. Zippy knows she only gets one present for Christmas, and this Christmas she has laid it all out on the line to Santa: she asks for a piano. She writes:
…It was all I could think about: a piano, a piano, a piano. I had no idea what was compelling me in this desire, but it went straight to my heart, and I feared for myself if Santa didn’t comply. …I wanted the piano more than life itself, but I had also asked Santa for a doll with two buttons—one that made it be a real baby and one that turned it back into a doll. I was gambling: if I didn’t get the piano at least I’d get a real baby, and then I’d have something to live for.
My piano obsession was written in worry lines all over my parent’s faces. I figured they were worried about where we’d put it. I assured them I’d be happy to give up my cot and sleep inside the piano if necessary, but they said nothing. I told them we could put it in the living room and I would cut all the fingertips out of my gloves and play it there. Silence. …It seemed that nobody was holding out any hope for this one.
On Christmas Eve…I felt my stomach turn over with dread. …What if Santa was actually mad at me for asking him to carry such a thing as a piano all the way from the North Pole? What if flying it around caused one of the reindeer to founder, and Santa had to stop and shoot it in the head? How could I ever forgive myself?
That Christmas Eve night, Zippy and her parents walk to a party at Zippy’s best friend’s house. They are much wealthier than Zippy’s family, and the “heat and beauty and bounty” of their home seems too much for Zippy to bear that night. Her heart is hurting, and even more so when her best friend Rose shows her the early Christmas present her parents have given her: a piano. Well, more like a tabletop keyboard, with only two octaves, but as Zippy says,
It might as well have been a piano.
I wondered if it would still work if I threw up on it.
Instead of throwing up, Zippy is gracious. She plays the piano while her friend sings, and makes it through the night without crying, though she is completely miserable. Snow begins to fall heavily, and she and her mother wait as her father walks home to retrieve the truck. She writes,
As we got into Dad’s warm truck my parents said nothing about my despair, and I swore to myself I would never comment on it again, either. So my best friend got the one thing I wanted most, the one thing I would never have? So what if when she woke up in the morning there would be presents spread so far out across the living room floor the children would have to begin opening presents in the hallway? What was all this to me?
In the living room we could see our breath. I …started to go straight into the warm den, but my dad stopped me and eased me deeper into the living room.
And there, in front of our sweet little tree, stood a piano. Not a church-size piano, but one much, much bigger than Rose’s. It stood on legs. It had its own bench. It had probably four octaves, and three music books. And propped up on the music stand was a letter, written in…big, loopy handwriting that could only come from a very shy, very strange man:
Dear Child:
I hope you don’t mind that I delivered this a day early, but I thought you might like to have it tonight. I’m sorry I can’t also bring you the doll, but to be honest, no one has ever before made such a request. My elves are working on it, but it might be a long time before we get it just right.
Thank you for not losing faith. Thank you for being so brave tonight.
Love,
Santa
Some Christmases, we don’t get the piano. But some Christmases, we do. So this Christmas, be glad at that star. Just stand there and shine. And know that you are loved, you are precious, you are beautiful. For every night a child is born is a holy night, and you were once a child. Amen.
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1. Children’s song
2. From Spiritual Literacy, by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, 446-447