Do Not Be Afraid | A Sermon on Vulnerability Incarnate, Christmas, and Home Alone
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin for the Feast of Christmas Day, December 24, 2021.
Luke 2:(1-7) 8-20
Merry Christmas!
We’ve finally arrived at Bethlehem and our hearts, if we are paying close attention, remind us that we’ve been here before –that we know this place with a familiarity that defies all logic.
Of course, we get here every year in some form or fashion –to Christmas. And so, it is familiar to us, a brief stop on our journey through the timeline of our lives. And yet, I’m talking about a different sort of thing, a different familiarity, a coming home, if you will.
Christmas is like coming home.
It’s like coming home to a truth you’ve been longing for and yet have carried with you all along.
Every year, we gather to hear the story of Christmas. Mary, Joseph, the infant Jesus. A tale as old as time and yet one that never grows old.
And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn (Luke 2:7).
We hear those words and they cast a vision: a vision of life on the brink of death, of promise in the face of risk, of incarnation incased in vulnerability.
If we let our imaginations take over, the words expand and became present with us in a new way, planting themselves in our hearts and awakening a truth that was always there.
Listen again to the story as told by one commentator –see it unfold:
Mary and Joseph, tired, exhausted after their long journey. . . We can smell the stable, that pungent mixture of dung and hay. We can hear the animals bleat and cackle and moo. We picture a woman in the sweet distress of childbirth, her heaving sighs, her groans of pain. We see the little baby. all red and wrinkled, olive skinned, thick dark curly hair, but a face that looks like Winston Churchill, as all babies do. We watch him at his mother’s breast . . . We see his eyelids flutter and close, . . . he falls asleep. We see them lay him in a feeding trough and clean up after the birth. We see the shepherds peeking in by the light of a fire, rough men, wrinkled by wind and sun, a little smelly, eyes filled with awe and wonder. [1]
Our Savior has come. The one we have longed for is here. 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 the Messiah, the Lord (Luke 2:10).
“Do not be afraid,” Scott Erickson writes, “could be a legitimate substitution for ‘Merry Christmas.’”
He writes:
This command kicked off the first message spoken after four hundred years of divine silence. It was directed to Zechariah as he learned of the upcoming birth of his son, John the Baptist. It was said to Mary as she received the message that she would be bearing the Savior through her virgin womb. It was spoken to Joseph [and then again to the shepherds] as they were hired to be the first incarnation preachers in the coming kingdom. And it is announced to you today as you celebrate this historical moment that is still happening in your midst [2].
Do not be afraid.
Every year, our family sits down on multiple occasions to ponder in our hearts this Christmas story as seen in the antics of Kevin McCallister.
Many of you are probably familiar with the movie Home Alone, where young Kevin is accidentally left behind when his large, messy family travels to Paris for the Christmas holidays.
When I was young, I loved the hijinks that ensue when Kevin fights the bad guys –the slapstick comedy making me laugh until I cried.
Now that I’m older, I find myself invested in the more tender moments. Kevin walking through the house to see if he is truly alone. Kevin buying a toothbrush for himself at the corner store. Kevin sitting down to pray:
“Bless this highly nutritious microwaveable macaroni and cheese dinner and the people who sold it on sale. Amen.”
And, my favorite scene, Kevin slipping inside a large, old church, seeking safety and solace while a children’s choir sings “O Holy Night.”
Except that Kevin’s barely there before he sees his neighbor, Old Man Marley, a solitary, lonely man who Kevin has come to see as almost a boogey man character, despite Marley having done little to nothing to earn such a title.
Kevin is afraid. There is nowhere else to run, and Old Man Marley has gotten up and is coming over to where Kevin is sitting.
“May I sit down?”
His voice is gentle, calm, even while he looms over Kevin, tall and thin.
“You live next to me, don’t you? You can say hello when you see me. You don’t have to be afraid.”
Kevin finds that not only is Marley not scary, but that he is a good confidant, as Kevin goes on to share what has brought him to church and how hard it is to be in relationship with family. Marley knows what Kevin is getting at.
“Deep down,” he says, “you’ll always love them. But you can forget that you love them. You can hurt them, and they can hurt you. That’s not just because you’re young. You want to know the real reason why I’m here right now?
I came to hear my granddaughter sing. And I can’t come hear her later tonight. I’m not welcome.”
“At church?”
“You’re always welcome at church. I’m not welcome with my son.”
You see, Marley hasn’t spoken to his son in years. And Kevin’s advice is to give him a call. But Marley admits that he’s afraid of what his son might say.
“No offense,” Kevin says, “but aren’t you a little old to be afraid?”
“You’re never too old to be afraid,” says Marley.
Do not be afraid –this is the message of angels and prophets alike and yet, as Kevin and Marley remind us, we are all afraid of something. To fear is to be human alongside other humans.
So often, the source of our fear rests in our discomfort with vulnerability. We desperately want to be seen and to be loved, and to see others and to love others, but we don’t want to be rejected. To be hurt.
And yet, as C.S. Lewis once said, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything; and your heart will certainly be wrung; and possibly broken.”
When I watch that scene between Kevin and Marley, I nearly always cry. It breaks my heart, in the best sort of way. And I’m reminded of something else Scott Erickson says:
We get emotional because we are witnessing something true. . . . Something true that unites us. A moment of solidarity. A connective happening that awakens us to see that we are not alone. Like when a group of strangers is unanimously filled with joy as they watch fireworks together. Or when someone shares a tasty dish with someone else and says, “You must try this. It’s so good!” Or when a newborn baby enters the room, and everyone turns and looks because they know they are witnessing the magic of someone seen who just came from the unseen [3].
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 the Messiah, the Lord (Luke 2:10).
At Christmas, we are reminded that to love is to be vulnerable. And that the same is true for God. For God is love. And when God decided that to be God without us was unacceptable, he became God with us in a very specific way: as a “little baby, all red and wrinkled, olive skinned, thick dark curly hair, but a face that looks like Winston Churchill, as all babies do.”
A baby, placed in our hands. Vulnerability incarnate.
Here’s the truth: God is real. God is with us. And in God, we are home. This is what unites us, what we’ve been longing for and yet have carried with us all along. And what we fear can serve as a point of connection for communion with the Divine.
In the final scene of Home Alone, Kevin waves to Marley, who has reunited with his son, just as Kevin has been reunited with his parents. And we are all reminded that while we are never too old to be afraid, we are also never truly alone in our fear.
For unto us a child is born, to us a Son is given (Isaiah 9:6).
Amen.
[1] Leonard VanderZee, “Christmas,” Christmas Day, December 25, 2019; https://cepreaching.org/resources/liturgical-season-resources/advent-year-a.
[2] Scott Erickson, Honest Advent: Awakening to the Wonder of God-with-Us Then, Here, and Now, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2020), 186.
[3] Erickson, Honest Advent, 159-60.
