Sunday, December 25, 2016

A Courageous Christmas

It's Christmas Morning.  At worship this morning, a sentence from the Prayer of Invocation spoke to my spirit:  "Bring us to our knees before the manger, that we may then stand with confidence before the dangers around us."  The birth of Jesus invites a posture of piety, a kneeling before the manger, where a tiny, vulnerable baby is cradled.  I am a child of the German Evangelical Church. This is where my piety is grounded: In the Gospel, on my knees in a stable before an infant named Jesus.

But piety is not a sentimental spirituality that is disconnected from the realities of earth.  Piety moves us to "stand with confidence before the dangers around us."  Whether we are standing with vulnerable orphans of war and famine, with those with some debilitating and isolating illness, or with those who face economic disasters--faith moves us from our knees to our feet.  Trusting in the grace and truth we glimpse in Bethlehem's manger, we are disciples who engage in the world.  Christmas begins with piety and moves us to prophetic action.  When the church stands with confidence before the powers and principalities of this world, it declares its allegiance to the Christ in the cradle, to the Crucified Christ on the cross, and to the Risen Christ who promises to be with us forever.

The great temptation for the Christian Church in this time is that we become comfortable and complacent with evil in our midst.  We let someone else "stand before the dangers around us" while we say, "It's not my problem.  It's too complicated.  It's too controversial."    We surrender our voice and our moral responsibility both to kneel and then to stand up for the little ones (Matthew 25). 

Lately, I have been astounded that some are calling for us to return to a nuclear arms race.  I well remember the work of SANE/FREEZE (forerunner of Peace Action) in the 1980's.  I remember William Sloane Coffin, and the prophetic voices of others like Martin Buber, Bertrand Russell, Albert Schweitzer, Harry Bellefonte, who called us to resist the danger of nuclear proliferation.  Our prophets taught us that our security was not in weapons, not in the military-industrial complex, not in threatening words on the lips of world leaders.  True security derives from trusting God to be our refuge and strength.  And those prophetic voices changed the world.

In my last parish, there were congregants who lived on a farm adjacent to a former Minute Man II Missile silo--one of 150 such sites in Western Missouri.  I would pass that underground silo on the way to visit the farm family in their home.  It was unnerving to think that such a deadly weapon was once located just a few hundred yards from the home of my friends.  That missile might have created catastrophic devastation somewhere else in God's world.  Today that silo has been decommissioned because others with faith and courage moved from their knees to their feet.

I not only wish you a Merry Christmas today, but I also wish you a Courageous Christmas.  May your piety, your faith, your devotion to the little Baby in the manger lead you to a spirituality that is sensitive to the needs of all God's little ones, whether they be near or far away.  May your piety lead you to prophetic witness that is willing to "stand with confidence before the dangers around us."  Isn't that, after all, what this tiny Baby will do as he grows up and finds his voice?  Isn't that, ultimately, what he calls and claims us to do in our own time?

Give us courage at Christmas, O God, that we may kneel and then take our stand for your justice and peace.  Amen.   

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