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A Sermon for Judson Church
December 17, 2006
Third Sunday of Advent
Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper
A Christmas Nap
Ancient Testimony: Zephaniah 3: 12 - 20
I remember being given gifts by outsiders at Christmas, gifts that came from people who didn't know you and sort of pitied you. It was humiliating. This did not happen to my family every year, but it happened enough for me to know how not to forget it. I also remember the years when we had enough money to give gifts to the anonymous pile - you know, nothing used, nothing broken, those kinds of instructions. It was exhilarating. Life is lived between these two poles of humility and exhilaration by many of us in many ways. We can get very confused in there, in that world between the giver and the gifted, the receiver and the giver, the weak and the strong, the rich and the poor, the active and the passive. We remember how right Paolo Friere was when he said, "If you must help someone, please do it in a way that also doesn't hurt them."
Many of us are in the middle of HOLIDAZE right now, when we look around for the right gift and hope that we aren't overdoing the dumb side of Christmas on behalf of its bright side. Many of us don't know how to rest in the receiver role; instead, we oppress ourselves with hyperactivity on behalf of the giver and active role. We are afraid we would find the receiver role humiliating, but we don't always find the giver role exhilarating. Just this morning, desperate for a gift for my brother, I searched the Improvements site, under "Gifts for Him." There, for a mere $49.99, I could purchase him a remote turkey fryer thermometer. That way, if he wants to do something dumb like fry a turkey, he can do so from his living room.
What my brother would really like for Christmas is a nap. He works way too hard seven days a week. But I don't know how to give that to him. See, we were part of the same family. We were humiliated by our passivity. We have yet to learn how to like it.
I heard a story yesterday from the son of a former pastor of this church. I went to visit him because, by accident, he found information about his father on the web. His wife was showing an Ecuadorian guest how to use the Web. "Just punch something into Google," she said. He couldn't come up with anything. So she, with abandon, punched in Renato Giacomelli Alden, her husband's father's name. She was also trying to make a point about immigration because Rev. Alden had changed his name from Renato Giacomelli to Ray Alden during the time he worked at Judson. Lo and Behold, the site turned up a lot of information about Rev. Giacomelli Alden. The son was excited and got in touch with us. I was also excited and got in touch with him - and some interesting archival material will be the result. But while I was visiting with Ray Jr., he told me the story of what happened to him when he was six years old: his father died; his mother worked as a phone operator seven days a week to keep them together; Judson had no money to support them - and he was the yearly recipient of Christmas gifts from strangers. When I got to his lovely home, he was giving gifts. For all I know, one of them was a remote turkey fryer thermometer.
How do we live in a world where passive poverty sits next to active wealth all day long? Marchers silently shopped for justice on Fifth Avenue yesterday, at the very same time that Riggoleto was being performed at the Met. It happens all day long.
On my way to see my new friends, I took my dog for a walk at Fort Tryon Park. It was a beautiful day. People were picnicking. The river sparkled. I made one turn and there, next to one of those giant rocks that like to border the Hudson on the palisades, was a giant forsythia bush. It was starting to bloom.
My body turned to ice. "This year I will have forsythia on my Christmas table," I thought as I clipped some fronds. I so want to warm the globe but I also don't want to spend the rest of my life in a canoe. Even Garrison Keillor was noting the global warming phenomenon from his perch in Minneapolis. He said that there was no snow there, yet. He added that without snow Minnesotans might get soft: "They need the adversity that comes with snow."
Zephaniah would understand. He is big on the verbs "restore" and "renew." He writes about the return of the exiles: he means the real return of the real exiles, but it sounds quite metaphoric the way he puts it. How are we who are so exiled from peace and quiet in the HOLIDAZE to be restored? Do we know how to nap? Or have we forgotten?
Today I have only one recommendation: learn to rest. My shorthand for rest is "nap." Nap is not just closing your eyes and sleeping. Nap is what the Hokey Pokey means when it says take your whole self out, put your whole self in, do the hokey pokey, and turn yourself about. Rest is the balance of the tensions. God knows there are tensions. It is so easy to do bad while doing good. It is so easy to destroy the environment. Rest is the management of the tension by locating a form of balance.
It is the whole self in and the whole self out.
It is trying to be as much a receiver as a giver.
It is being active as much as we are passive, and passive as much as we are active.
It is screeching on your brakes and stopping.
It is putting forsythia on the Christmas table and staring at it, crying about it, and restoring the capacity to do something about it.
I love the story of one mother's Christmas angel, a young girl, just like our angels today. She didn't get to be an angel; she had to be a star. She was upset about being a star and wanted to be an angel. Her mother talked her into the role she had to play. Her mother was also overjoyed that, when the play was over, her daughter had LOVED being a star. How had the turn happened? "The angels had to sing. I just had to stand there and shine."
Today our children both sang and shone. They had a balance. The balance gave us peace. We rest in the enjoyment of our beautiful children just standing there and shining in
"glo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oria" today. Then we hear about a grandfather, Raymond Lambert, fulfilling what he thinks of as the sex needs of his granddaughters in a state not to be named. He is on the radio saying something that ought to bring a little more ice to our tired veins today: While denying that he had done anything wrong, he said, "We are normal people… We are Baptists."
Ice and warming. Cold and warm. Active and passive. Rich and poor. Exhausted and napping. These are the tensions of our lives.
So we must rest in the tension between safe children and unsafe children. Why? Because if we don't learn how to rest, we won't be able to do anything to help anyone. If we rest, we may be able to help.
And there is one more good reason to rest. It is beyond the important matter of learning to be useful. It is the joy and grace and peace and hope and light of this season. God's decision to return the exiles and to send a Messiah is an endorsement of humanity in all its disquietude, in all its activity and passivity, all its shine and all the shine that has been rubbed off.
I like to rest with my dog. He exists to help me rest. When I look at him, I always see an astonishing thing. He has absolute confidence that the universe has endorsed him. I have absolute confidence that the universe has endorsed you and me, too. Rest in that promise - and you will find yourself renewed, restored, un-exiled, and shining. Refuse to rest in that promise and you will find yourself restless, exiled, and dull. Shine. Rest. Nap. Balance activity with passivity and passivity with activity. We were so created. And now we are so restored.
Amen.
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