Mary's Treasure

Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 9: 2-7 and Luke 2: 1-20 Sermon Title: Mary’s Treasure Preached on December 24, 2022 This is Christmas Eve, which is the high point of the year for many of us. It’s a wonderful night. An important night. Especially for kids, tonight is the most anticipated night of the entire year because of one jolly man who I hope will be making a visit to your house. However, if in your house there are kids who are sure that tonight is all about Santa Clause, I want them to know that Santa is not whom tonight is all about. Santa Clause is not the most important person we think of on Christmas Eve. That spot in our house is reserved for Cousin Eddie. Do you know Cousin Eddie? Giving Clark an update on his daughter, he says, “She falls down a well; her eyes go crossed. Get’s kicked by a mule. They go back.” When Grandpa wants a kiss from the grandkids, he warns, “Better take a rain check on that. He’s got a lip fungus they ain’t identified yet.” Cousin Eddie is the greatest character in the greatest Christmas movie, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. In our house, we watch it every year. Some years, we watch it twice because we love it. I just bought Sara and the girls t-shirts that say, “Save the neck for me, Clark,” which is what he says as the turkey is being carved. I love Cousin Eddie, and nothing gets to the heart of what this night is all about so well as considering how the Christ Child was born for him and all the Cousin Eddies of the world. We know that’s true because on this night so long ago, there were kings and princes sleeping in-between silk sheets under high, vaulted ceilings, but the angels did not nudge them awake to tell them the news of the Christ Child’s birth. There were scholars up late pondering the great questions of the age, but the angels left them to their contemplations. That night long ago, there were saints meditating, priests praying, and preachers preaching who missed hearing the angels’ message on that first Christmas Eve, for while the angels could have gone to the rich, the powerful, the great, the holy, or the strong, they went to a field in the country to announce the birth of the Savior to shepherds. Now if you know anything about shepherds, then you know that the angels going to the shepherds is extraordinary. It’s one of those truly strange realities that has become commonplace. We’re so used to hearing it, we don’t even realize how strange it is: that the angels going to the shepherds is upside down. It’s something like how we park in driveways and drive on parkways. It’s an incredibly strange feature of the Christmas story that we’ve heard about so often that we’ve made it sound inevitable, but don’t skip right over this little detail. I ask you to stop and think about it. The angels went to the shepherds even though they were the Cousin Eddies of long ago. It’s true. They lived with animals in fields under the stars, so imagine them. How did they look? How did they dress? How did they smell? Imagine what high society people did when they saw the shepherds walking into town. Archeologists have dug up the back yards of mansions in the Roman Empire, and there they’ve found statues of shepherds. Wealthy people had shepherd statues displayed on their patios. These exaggerated depictions of them, with missing teeth, rags for clothes, and matted hair decorated the space so people could laugh at their backwardness, for in the ancient world, they were the class of people everyone was allowed to make fun of. They were the punch line because they didn’t talk right. They were considered rude and ignorant. Uncouth and foolish. Illiterate and unclean. Had the Snuffy Smith comic run back then, Ma and Pa Smith would have been shepherds instead of hillbillies. Had National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation been made in the dark days of the Roman Empire when Jesus was born in a manger, Cousin Eddie would have parked a herd of sheep in Clark’s front yard rather than pulling that RV into his driveway. They were the lowest of the low. They were the cast aside and forgotten, yet when Almighty God sent out the announcement that the Savior of the World was born, an angel went to the shepherds. Why? Because some people can see miracles. Cousin Eddie knows exactly how blessed Clark Griswold is. However, Clark Griswold is too busy and too distracted to notice. He was too preoccupied with getting his Christmas bonus to notice how much he had already. He was so obsessed with getting the lights on his house to work that he had no time to notice that the light of the world was born. In the words of Clark’s wife, his expectations for every holiday are so blown out of proportion that no family has any hope of living up to what he’s aiming for, and even as he was surrounded by plenty, he was so focused on what he didn’t have that he ignored the miracles all around him. He dreams of a swimming pool while Cousin Eddie lives in a tenement on wheels. He has a wife who adores him, yet he’s consumed with loathing for his neighbors. He invites a house full of people to come spend Christmas with him and then spends all his time outside. To put things over the top, Cousin Eddie shows up. Cousin Eddie wasn’t supposed to show up. He’s the last person you want in your house when you have blown out of proportion Christmas expectations. When you’re working for your own version of perfection, you’re monitoring the perimeter for disappointments. When you have an unrealistic idea in your head, every shortcoming takes up real estate in your mind. When you’re working for more, the miracles you have already are not on your radar, so Clark would have been blind to the angels, deaf to their message, while Cousin Eddie can see what Clark cannot. That’s the truth. It’s the tragedy of those of us who so fill up the manger with Christmas cards, Christmas cookies, ornately decorated Christmas trees, and perfectly prepared Christmas dinners. We fill up the manger with so much that there’s no more room left for baby Jesus. Some of us have worked so hard to get tonight just right that all we can see is what’s out of place and whose behavior is falling short of our ideal. On this Christmas Eve just like any other Christmas Eve, there are those of us who are so surrounded by miracles that they can’t even see them all, while out in the world are shepherds who heard the angels’ voices because their world is so dark that the light shines more brightly. Disappointments were so commonplace to the shepherds that a miracle caused them to stop and pay attention. Then they dropped everything to go and see. Did you hear all that? The shepherds heard what the angels said, and then they dropped what they were doing to go and see the Christ Child. That’s an important example for us to follow. It’s an important lesson for busy, preoccupied people to learn because this Christmas, like every Christmas before and every Christmas after, the key to sucking the marrow from this momentous occasion is recognizing the miracle that God brings us. That might sound obvious; however, on Christmas, not everyone can see the miracles. Those who can’t stop working on the Christmas lights may miss the reality that the Light of the World has come. Those who can’t stop tinkering on Christmas dinner may be too distracted to realize the One who comes to offer us His very body and blood. Those who are obsessed with giving the perfect gifts wrapped with perfect bows may miss out on the Gift that our God is bringing us tonight. My friends, as the shepherds dropped what they were doing to go and see the Christ Child, I want you to know that now is the time to stop working for perfect. If we could get life perfect, there would be no need for the Christ Child to be born. Now is the time to stop what you’re doing to open your eyes to the miracles that are surrounding you right now. That’s the point of all of this. The Christ Child is born to save us from ourselves. Look around you and notice the miracles. If you have family in your house, consider the gift you’ve been given. I don’t just mean the members of your family that you get along with and who actually help clean up after the meal. Think about all of them. Who is the Cousin Eddie in your family? In our family, it was Uncle Al. Al baked the turkey with the bag of giblets still in it one year. That grossed us all out. He’d always complain about how my parents’ trash can was too small. “How you going to fit anything in there, George?” he’d always ask my dad. What did Al know about Christmas? He didn’t help to clean up after the meal. We tried to keep him out of the kitchen before and after given the giblet incident. But he could see what we had. Can you see? Can you see what you have? Christmas doesn’t come because we work so hard and get it perfect. Christmas comes regardless of our preparation. We take notice when we stop working so hard. Take notice, my friends. Listen. Thousands of years ago, the God who created this world saw fit to be born in a manager so that we would finally get it, so that we would finally understand just how much He loves us and wants to know who we are. He’s coming, even if the turkey comes out so dry you can’t eat it. He’s coming, even if the cat ends up wrapped up in one of the presents. He’s coming, even if your dog goes nosing through the garbage, the tree goes up in flames, and the Christmas bonus doesn’t come through. The Light of the World is coming. Love incarnate. Mary’s treasure for all humankind. Halleluiah. Amen.