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Christmas Eve 2008 // Lessons & Carols -- Celebration of Worship
Northside Presbyterian Church, Ann Arbor, MI
The Gratitude of Shepherds
On this brink between great dark and great light, the French poet and philosopher Jean-Louis Chretien nudges us to the threshold – if not across it:
“Nothing before God belongs to us as our own … if not our ability to say thank you.”
In this season when many of us have experienced great loss, and many of us may remember great loss, and many of us may fear great loss: employment … loved ones … our dear friend and brother, Loren …
In this season when our uncreaturely expectations would eclipse for us creation’s irrepressible hope …
In this season when our cacophony of entitlement would trump the harmonies of the God of grace …
Let us hear – really hear – these words from Jean-Louis Chretien again:
“Nothing before God belongs to us as our own … if not our ability to say thank you.”
Possessing gratitude. But for what?
Let us let the shepherds of Luke’s Christmas birth narrative be our guides tonight.
For Chretien’s words come to us incarnate – made flesh – by the grateful response of those outcasts of all outcasts, the shepherds, this evening.
The shepherds. Those who tend God’s lowliest of creatures, for they cannot pretend to own them. Those who tend their lonely, dumbfounded selves, as well, for they can never quite come to self-possession or worldly worth, both.
Those to whom the word of God comes. First.
As well as it might for us. When we are feeling lonely and unworthy and dispossessed – and just plain lost. When God’s rude grace confronts us with tending and herding the spaces where we are the most sheepish and where we are the most ashamed. The spaces that dare not speak their names.
For it’s especially when we find ourselves in those nameless, shameless, shameful, and sheepish spaces – that the angels can, and will, find us.
For it’s especially when we find ourselves in the midst of another imperial census for another terror-filled war on terror – that God’s census can, and will, make sure that each lost soul counts.
And the angel said to the shepherds, “Do not be afraid, for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ, the Lord.
And many angels joined in, singing, “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
And our earth, peace among those whom God favors.”
What to do, but to join these shepherds. And to proceed, like them, to the mangiest corners of our holiest of places.
The manger – in Bethlehem. The mangiest corners – of our holiest of places. Where God’s new life awaits us, still.
What to do – but, in taking that journey, to lay claim to the one thing that is our own:
“Nothing before God belongs to us as our own … if not our ability to say gracias.”
Literally: Graces.
Universally: Thank you.
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