To me, Christmas is a time for stories –
maybe the best time for stories. I remember, as a little boy, sitting in my family
room on Christmas Eve. The grown-ups were
waiting to go to Midnight Mass, having a few drinks and telling stories – some
old, some new, all filled with joy. In
my memory, those loud, cascading stories were followed by my mother standing up
and reading the story, that grand
story we just heard, the story of Mary and Joseph crossing Judea to reach a
stable, and angels crossing heaven and earth to reach the shepherds. For all I know, it was a one-time thing, my
mother deciding one year that the revelers needed a little reminding of what
the holiday was all about. But
in the memory of my heart, we did it that way every year.
So, since Christmas is a time for
stories, I want to tell you three stories tonight. Two of them may not seem to have much to do
with Christmas, but hang with me for a few minutes.
Here’s story #1. A couple of weeks ago, two parishioners, a married
couple, were driving south on Holmes on a dark December night. They had come to about 75th Street
when suddenly they saw something in front of them and had to swerve to miss it
– a figure walking in the street. The
person was dressed in dark clothes and wearing a hood, and the couple had
nearly hit her. Recovering from the
shock, the wife remembered that in the back seat, she had a reflective sash
like nighttime joggers use. So the
couple circled back around to meet the person one more time and offer the reflector.
Getting out, the wife greeted the person,
a middle-aged African American woman, and said, “Ma’am, I’m sorry to bother
you, but we nearly hit you as we came by.
We’d like you to have this,” she said, handing her the reflective sash. “Why were you walking in the street, anyway?”
The woman replied, “I just got off work,
and I’m walking to the bus stop. The
sidewalk is so broken up, it’s not safe in the dark. But neither is the street, I suppose.”
The wife offered to drive her to the bus
stop, but the woman said it was only a couple of blocks away. Then the husband said, “Well, where do you
live?”
“39th and Woodland,” the
woman said, “but you don’t need to do that.”
“What are cars for?” the husband asked,
with a smile.
Now, behind his smile, the man was a
little worried. Working as a hospice
nurse, he’d gone to see patients in the Ivanhoe neighborhood several times, and
he remembered someone advising him it was best to come in the early morning
“because then the junkies are still asleep.”
But the man and his wife drove the woman home anyway.
Things were quiet for a while, but as
they crossed Troost, the boundary of Kansas City’s racial divide, the woman
started narrating the journey. She told
about how she and her husband had lived in their neighborhood 15 years and how pleased
she was to see it making a recovery now.
She talked about raising their kids there and how their next-door
neighbor is her husband’s best friend.
She talked about the storefront community center on the corner and how
proud of it she was – how it had become the center of the neighborhood’s
life. Dropping off the woman at her home,
the couple found their perception had changed.
No longer did they feel they’d crossed a boundary into a foreign and
foreboding place. They’d simply crossed
into a different neighborhood – and began a relationship along the way.
* * *
Here’s story #2. On Monday, I was blessed to join literally
scores of St. Andrew’s people serving at the Free Store downtown. As you know, this was much more than a meal
and a clothing distribution for poor people.
The guests were welcomed into the cathedral for live music and a chance
to get warm. They were brought into the
large parish hall for lunch, where volunteers took their orders and brought them
plates filled with ham, turkey, potatoes, dressing, corn on the cob, green
beans, and other delights. Sitting at
each table were members of our Order of St. Luke, there simply for the ministry
of pastoral listening and presence.
After lunch, the guests came downstairs to shop at the Free Store for
coats, hoodies, socks, gloves, and a host of other items.
Among the volunteers at the store were a
few of us there just to hang out and talk with people. It was in one of those conversations that I
met Kevin. Kevin could be my brother – about
my age, about my height, about the same amount of gray in his hair. Where the similarities stopped was with his
hands. I shook Kevin’s hand, and it
didn’t feel right. His fingers were red
and swollen, and the skin was cracked and peeling. He said he’d felt embarrassed at lunch
because the volunteer sitting at the table had been looking at his hands –
dirty as well as damaged. I asked what
had happened, and he explained it was frostbite. He’d gotten frostbite, Kevin said, because he
lives in the woods.
“In the woods?” I asked, thinking I’d
misunderstood.
“Yes.”
He said he camps under a rickety lean-to with a few other guys – not
nice guys, guys who steal your stuff and, in Kevin’s words, “abuse” you if you
fight back. He said he had everything he
needed to stay warm – a new thermal sleeping bag and plenty of blankets. But, he said, “It’s only good if you can stay
dry. That’s how I got frostbite.”
I asked him what he needed, and he said,
“I need a tent – and I need to get away from the guys in the camp. I don’t pretend my problems are anybody’s
fault but my own,” he continued. “I have
screwed up over and over again. But I
can’t make any better choices where I am.
I need to get free.”
Now, I was there to listen, and offer
pastoral presence, and refer people to the human-services agencies that were
there to help. I was just supposed to
let Kevin know that God loves him, that people at the Free Store value him as a
human being, and that someone from ReStart or the United Way could help him
find a place to stay. But Kevin is a
loner; he wasn’t going to avail himself of that help, and I knew it. So I arranged to meet him later that
afternoon, just the two of us; and I went to go buy him a tent.
Now, I have no delusions that the tent
is anything but a short-term solution to a web of problems I can’t begin to untangle. It may or may not have been the “right” thing
to do; but because I crossed that boundary, at least Kevin was dry as it rained
that night. Maybe the next night, too.
* * *
Here’s story #3. Two thousand years ago, an unmarried couple
on the move came into a city where they didn’t know anyone. Because of the crowds, they camped in a cave next
to someone else’s animals, in hay that no doubt hadn’t been mucked out anytime
recently. She was very pregnant; and as bad
luck would have it, the baby came that night.
Nine months earlier, the young woman had been visited by an angel who’d
crossed a boundary between heaven and earth to let her know the
boundary-crossing had only just begun. This
was not just an inconvenient pregnancy with the worst-timed delivery ever. This was the ultimate in boundary-crossing: This was God-With-Us, divinity in the
flesh.
God had looked at that young woman, and
the millions of other nobodies like her; and God said “yes” before Mary ever got
her chance.
God said, “Yes, I will do what I’ve
never done before.”
God said, “Yes, I will take the risk to
become one of you.”
God said, “Yes, I will put myself into
the drama of salvation, and propel the story in a way that Israel’s kings and
prophets could never have imagined.”
God said, “Yes, I will heal the
separation between you and me, between you dear, unruly, broken people and I
who formed you in love; and I will forgive whatever awfulness you decide to
perpetrate on me.”
God said, “Yes, I will cross the
boundary between the common and the holy, and I will redeem even the dirtiest
straw, and the vilest cross, into a throne fit for a king.”
God said, “Yes! I will
be made flesh, and I will move into
the neighborhood, and I will save you from the inside out.”
* * *
There are no guarantees when you go and
cross a boundary. Once you’ve committed
the trespass, you can’t step back and undo it.
You don’t know what’s coming when you drive into a distant neighborhood
or promise to meet someone whose behavior you can’t predict. But with everything I have, I believe Jesus
would say, “Yes, cross the boundary anyway.”
And on Christmas, when angels break into
the shepherds’ silent night and the entire heavenly army resounds with God’s
praise – on Christmas, I believe Jesus would say, “Begin that boundary-crossing
with the boundaries of your own heart.”
If this service tonight is just an
obligation, a nod to tradition or the family’s demands, then Jesus would say to
you, “Surprise! In prayer and song, in
bread and wine, I am here.”
If this night feels empty, the joy of
Christmas buried deep under layers of pain and heartache, then Jesus would say
to you, “I know that pain, and still
– I am here.”
If the angels’ news feels old and tired;
if faith feels like nothing but a nice ritual with nice people in a nice
building, then Jesus would say to you, “Let me rock your world – let me rule your world – because I am here.”
To each of us with longing hearts, Jesus
says, “I have crossed the boundary; I have come to stay; I have said the words
you can’t take back – I love you.”
So what do you say?
