The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for Christmas Eve, 2005

Texts: Isaiah 9:2-7/Luke 2:1-14

Title: “Suspended Business”

              Picture the scene, old Ebenezzer Scrooge sitting in his counting house (Charles Dickens, author of “A Christmas Carol,” that immortalized Scrooge, doesn’t explain exactly what a counting house is; perhaps a loan office)—he is sitting in his counting house---when the clock chimes six.  It is Christmas Eve, but the spirit of Christmas has been long absent in the life of old Scrooge.  He makes no time for such frivolities as those that bring joy to the people around him.  One such person, Scrooge’s faithful and long-suffering clerk, Bob Cratchit, shivering beside an underfed coal stove---Scrooge counts the coals expended as carefully as meticulously as the accounts receivable from his business---is very much into the spirit of the season, but little good does it do him.  The approach of Christmas, now just hours away, has only made his ill-tempered employer more ill-tempered than usual.

              The clock chimes six, as Bob casts a fretful glance at Scrooge’s door.  Minutes pass, but Bob dare not intrude on his master.  Scrooge tends the only clock that matters, and the hands of that clock move, or do not, at his bidding. Actually the world moves at his bidding, but, mind you, the world over which he reigns sovereign, is a pitifully small world indeed, allowing adequate room for business matters, but few of the matters that engage the Bob Cratchits of the world.      

              As the clock strikes six, Cratchit’s mind is on his family who in his absence are busily making preparations for the grandest Christmas their modest means can afford. Time drags along.  It is now half past six, though the idea that he is keeping Cratchit a full half hour beyond his quitting time fazes Mr. Scrooge not at all.  Why should it when Cratchit’s wants or needs register not at all for this insular man, and besides, he has no intention whatsoever of compensating Cratchit for overtime.

              It is just past six-thirty when the door to Scrooge’s office opens.  Ill-tempered as usual, Scrooge emerges, not with apologies for keeping Cratchit after hours, but instead cursing the fact that he is expected to release his employee from service on Christmas day.  Not a “good night, and Merry Christmas,” but instead Scrooge dismisses Cratchit with what amounts to a lump of coal, “be back to work all the earlier the next day.”

              Business was suspended for another day, and Scrooge, after a solitary, cheerless meal in an inn near the office, makes his way home.  Scrooge might well have lingered considerably longer over his meal had he known what awaited him at home. Early or late arriving, however, his date with the three spirits, Christmas past, Christmas present, and Christmas future, was not to be avoided.

              There are lessons life is prepared to teach us, only we may be either too young or too immature to embrace them.  There are lessons life is prepared to teach when we are too distracted to take them to heart. There are still other lessons life is prepared to teach, but they are lessons we learn too late to profit us very much.  Scrooge had failed to benefit from the lessons life was prepared to teach for each of those three reasons. But Scrooge, courtesy of Dickens, was given the second chance life often denies the rest of us. 

              The second chance came by way of a long, terrifying night, in which Scrooge was forced to account for his life, the mirror into which he gazed exposing the mean, shriveled thing his life had become.  On first reading or seeing Dicken’s “Christmas Carol” enacted, we are left to ponder the fate old Scrooge would face.  As the story unfolds, the likelihood that he will die unmourned, as his partner Jacob Morley did, seems more and more apparent.

              I have read and seen “A Christmas Carol” on the television, or enacted on the stage countless times, but each time I revisit that old friend Mr. Dickens gave us, I am caught up once again in the pure unadulterated joy that marks that story’s outcome.  As you all know, old Scrooge was redeemed from the threadbare, cheerless life he lived.  The miser turned into a saintly man who lived the rest of the years allotted him doing all that was within his power to bring hope and joy to his fellow man. Scrooge became a man about whom it would ultimately be said, “this was a man who knew how to keep Christmas.”  

              Extraordinary things can happen when the world’s business is suspended. Poor by worldly standards, Dickens’ character, Bob Cratchit and his family, re-introduced Scrooge to a world he had once known but had long since forgotten about.  Fact of the matter, Scrooge may never have decided to revisit that world had the decision not been taken out of his hands.  Scrooge’s life was redeemed from the insularity business enforced.  He learned to savor life as a gift in its own right. He learned to love the things he formerly scorned.

              In creating Scrooge Dickens exposes the poverty of life grounded in business-centered material aspirations.  His Cratchit, on the other hand, promotes the awesome possibilities that exist for those who savor the commonplace gifts of God that can’t be purchased at any price, but are available free of charge to those who preserve an openness to their presence. 

              It is of those commonplace gifts that the Bible speaks with most authority.  In all of literature is there anything to match the shear delight the prophets of God, and the psalmist takes in recounting these commonplace gifts of God? For them all of nature was one grand symphony dedicated to extolling the wonders of God, and so we hear in Psalm 96, “O sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth.  Sing to the Lord, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day.  Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples.”  

              “Sing to the Lord…Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the people.”  The declaration rings forth across the continents this night of nights with special force as we gather to celebrate the birth of our Savior. 

              It was business as usual, and suddenly business was suspended, that pretty much summarizes the plotline of Dickens’ “Christmas Carol.”  The same pertains to our lesson from Luke. Emperor Augustus ordered a census, and there being no other efficient way to conduct that operation, he ordered his subjects to return to their villages of origin.  Obedient to the emperor’s mandate, Joseph proceeded with the pregnant Mary to Bethlehem.

              It was business as usual, people in charge giving order, their subjects doing what was expected of them.  The birth of a child?  Nothing extraordinary there.  Nothing to disrupt business as usual. 

              Then, suddenly, business was suspended. The disruption, of course, does not occur at the site of the birth. The disruption occurs outside of town somewhere in the midst of some shepherds who were “keeping watch over their flock by night.”  Just as old Scrooge was visited by the three spirits at night, the shepherds had their own visitation, the visitor, in this case an angel of the Lord, disclosing new realities: “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Because business was suspended, Scrooge and the shepherds caught a glimpse of new worlds.  The three spirits who entered Scrooge’s life, and the angel that entered the shepherds’ lives, signaled new possibilities.  It is about new possibilities, friends, we sing this night, possibilities that find expression in one of the church’s most treasured pieces of music, “Joy to the world! Let earth receive her king.”

              Yet that birth we celebrate tonight is not in and of itself the story.  Part of the story, certainly, but the story itself is only completed in the life transforming rebirth that is prepared to set your life and mine on a new course. Conditions, however, must be right for that rebirth to occur.  We must be willing to suspend business. 

              The three spirits took business right out of Scrooge’s hands.  Likewise, the angel of the Lord took the ball from Emperor Augustus. Beyond all the business the world has ever, or will ever conduct, a new world is waiting to be born.  Not since the world began did heaven and earth’s business so completely, so dramatically, intersect. God took the decisive step on that night so long ago, the angel announcing that the Messiah, the Lord, had been born. But what the Lord did is transactional.  What God did must be completed in us, and the precondition for that is suspended business.  

              Remember how things were back before the storm.  Consider now how things have been since the storm.  I’m talking about a lot of suspended business, both literally and figuratively.  Thanks came to full stop in the storm’s aftermath. What a difference a couple of days made in our lives.

No, I’m not one of those who believe that God, for whatever motive, purposefully sent the storm to disrupt our lives, but I do believe that God is poised to help us use the event to a positive result.  We heard people from all walks of life, people who lost everything, express thanksgiving for having safely avoided the storm’s wrath. What regrets did you hear?  The regrets I most often heard out of the experience were not focused on the personal property lost, certainly regrettable, but on the family photos, or keepsakes of that sort, that were lost. The storm had a purging effect, separating the wheat of our lives from the chaff.

                      Suspended business.  That night some many years ago, the business of the world was suspended as the most dramatic event in the history of the world took place. Shepherds tending their flock didn’t know what to make of what they were experiencing.  To quiet their fears the angel of the Lord counseled them, “Do not be afraid; I am bringing you good news of great joy.” 

                    Engaged as thoroughly as we are with life’s business, it is truly a frightening prospect to have business suspended. Suspended business makes unfamiliar demands on us, and we don’t know how we should act. But I would argue that our actions are really not the issue, at least initially. The real issue, insofar as God’s agenda is concerned, is receiving.  God wants us to be attentive to what he is doing.

                     Credit old Scrooge for having paid attention, likewise the shepherds.  They overcame their fears and received what turned out to be life transforming news.  And having received, they acted.

                     What God did that night so long ago is transactional.  What God did in giving us Jesus must be completed in us, and it will be completed because we who to date have lived through so much suspended business, have been placed in circumstances where we are best positioned to hear God’s message of hope with new clarity: “Do not be afraid; I am bringing you good news of great joy.” 

                  We have heard the message, and with the new clarity we have obtained about life as a result of our recent circumstances, we are prepared as never before to profit from what we have learned.  Normal life has in many ways been suspended business for many of us.  We have learned new things as a result.  May God grant us wisdom and the will to act upon what we have learned.

The storm has passed, but there will be other storms.  The rule of God, however, is not suspended in the storm, for all of life’s business is in God’s hands and we are in God’s hands.  The same hand that cradled Jesus, cradles us.  The same Jesus whose birth we celebrate tonight is our advocate before God for all eternity. What was it the angel of the Lord said, “I bring your good news of great joy.”

PRAYER

                   O God, ancient of days, yet who are ever present to counsel and guide us, in reverent praise we gather to worship you as the sun slowly descends on this very special day.  A place hallowed by the faithfulness of generations who have called this church home, we assemble as two congregations who in our common commitment to you, seek to faithfully serve neighbor and world. As we anticipate our Savior’s birth, we pray that our zeal to serve you may find new forms of expression, and that we may find imaginative ways to bring the good news of his birth o the world

                    Lord, these last days, these last hours, have exhausted us.  We feel too depleted and sapped of energy to enjoy the sense of accomplishment we might otherwise have derived from meeting our holiday obligations. Our minds leap from one compartment to the next, this precious moment of silence inviting all manner of concerns to parade in review. Deliver us from the wearying list of responsibilities that never seems to grows shorter, and the alarm bell that incessantly rings to remind us of yet another obligation we must meet. Slow us down, O God, that we might truly be present to you as you are present to us.

                     The great Augustus, emperor of a vast kingdom, set his agenda, and hundreds set out to do his bidding.  In one small corner of that vast kingdom an angel was doing your   bidding.  The announcement of a Savior’s birth came with no great fanfare as might have occurred had one in Augustus’ line been born, instead the announcement was made to mere shepherds, members of society’s lowest class.

                     Yes, a king, but not any king the likes of which the world had ever know, Jesus established his reign among those society was likely to overlook or disregard. Born a commoner, he sought the commoner’s company, his reputation built on deeds done in the midst of those polite society scorned as low lifes and sinners.  What a marvel you are, Jesus, constantly defying our expectations, you are a king whose greatness was revealed in servanthood.

                  You came, Jesus, declaring peace on earth, but the world has rejected your message.  It is very likely that during this service of worship alone dozens around the world will die as a result of our warring madness. You came declaring peace, Jesus, but the world could not accommodate your message.  We pray this night for all those who suffer violence, all those against whom violence is planned.  We pray for those who bear arms as peacekeepers or peacemakers, with gratitude remembering the sacrifice of the women and men who serve under our flag.

                   We pray for those on whom the burden of leadership rests in these trying times.  We pray for our president, and those whom he has chosen to execute his agenda.  May that leadership team command wisdom and vision sufficient to meet the challenges they must face. We pray this night for our governor and those to whom she looks for counsel.  We pray for mayor Ray Nagin and his staff. As confidence in state and local leadership declines, embolden our leaders to consult broadly and act decisively.

                  Lord of all, who bears our burdens with us, we pray for your servant Bill this night as he continues to wage his battle.  We pray for Shane weakened by Leukemia, for Lloyd Dias hospitalized as a result of heart attack.  We pray for Kim Pretus as she mends from recent surgery.  We pray for the all the traumatized in this city and elsewhere who continue to struggle to cope in the aftermath of Katrina. We pray for those with no home in New Orleans to return to, no jobs, no prospects, no relief from the anxiety that plagues them day and night. In your mercy, brace the forlorn and despairing.

                O God, Holy Spirit, we rejoice in the birth of our Savior Jesus, the Christ, praying your forgiveness for all that bars his entrance into our lives.  On this night of all nights as glad tidings are heralded around the world, may the world’s business be suspended, so  that your business in Christ Jesus, may flourish.  In your strong name we pray the prayer Jesus taught us.