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Merry Christmas!
It is good to see you here this evening.
This is the night when we remember the story of the birth of Jesus, isn’t it. It is a big story that had a big impact on the entire world. And yet, it bloomed forth from a lot of regular events in the life of a young woman in a small Middle Eastern town 2000 years ago.
Tonight, I hope to create space for us to consider the regular routines of our lives, and how through them we may be connecting into a bigger story, a bigger plan.
I make this invitation with the words of a friend ringing through my mind. He said: “You know, Doyt, we are God’s plan. If it is going to play out, it is going to play out through us. We are the plan! We are God’s plan!”
It has always been that way, playing out through the regular routines of individuals traipsing through the world, bumping up against the little revelations, a beam of light, a friend’s insight, a new way of seeing an old thing. Make no mistake about it, none of us are here by accident. Your life, whether exciting or ordinary, famous or flying under the radar, long-lived or a flash, you are a critical part of the plan.
There is nothing done that cannot be used, transformed, particularly when done in love. For it is love, only love, that will save the world… and it blooms forth through the regular routines of our lives.
I was reminded of that the other day on a zoom call when someone said: Happy Lady of Guadalupe day. I’m from Minnesota, so I had to look it up. Turns out in 1531 there was a farmer named Juan Diego who lived on the outskirts of what is now Mexico City. His family had lived there for generations, long before the Spaniards arrived. He was new to Christianity, a recent convert baptized into the faith.
One day, in the course of his regular routines, something extraordinary happened. An apparition appeared before him. She was dressed in blue, pregnant, with stars around her head. She spoke to him not in Spanish, but in his native Aztec language.
“Juan Diego, build my church,” she said. “Build it right here.” Now he was a farmer, not a carpenter. He had no money. He had no status. So he ignored it. But she appeared again. “Juan Diego, build my church.” Reluctantly, he went to the Archbishop and told him the story. And the Archbishop believed him. Just kidding.
The Archbishop didn’t believe him, and said: “Bring me a sign, Juan Diego. So, Juan Diego left for home, walking along a path he had walked many times, but on this day he saw something different: roses growing on a barren hillside. Castilian roses, the kind that don’t grow there in the winter. So, he picked them, wrapped them in the poncho he always wore, and brought them back to the Archbishop.
When he opened his poncho the roses fell to the floor, aroma filled the room, and there on the fabric of his poncho, imprinted, was an image of the Virgin Mary. That is what the Archbishop’s eyes fell upon, and he remembered what Juan Diego had claimed: that she spoke to him in his native language. Her skin was brown, her eyes were brown, her hair black–the mother of Jesus was a mother to all people. This was the Archbishop’s revelation: that Mary met people in the regular routines of their lives as their mother, like them, who loved them with a love that could save the world.
And so, they built the church as a place to come and consider, week in and week out, how they were part of God’s plan. And that was true 500 years ago in the land of the Aztecs, and that is true for us in Seattle today. The plan continues to play out through us. We are God’s plan.
One way that happens here at Epiphany is through our outreach programs. Operation Nightwatch is one of them. I was at an Operation Nightwatch event earlier this year and heard a woman tell this story.
She was walking down the street one morning. Part of the regular routine of her life. Up a ways, on the other side of the street, was a man, disheveled, leaning against a building… screaming obscenities. Everyone steered clear of him, but she decided to cross the street so she could pass right by him.
As she walked by him, she looked him in the eyes and said: “Good morning.” He paused his shouting, as if coming into himself, looked at her, smiled, and said: “Good morning.” Then he added, sort of sheepishly: “I just had to get it all out.” She said: “I know what you mean.”
They shared a moment. She walked on, not realizing, I am sure, that she had loved him with a love that can save the world. Make no mistake about it, in that moment, she was revealing God’s plan and all she had to do was cross the street, and say: “Good morning.”
For Mary, all she had to do was go out to the barn. It may have been in the evening, it could have been early in the morning, but she was alone living out the regular routine of her life. Then, something different happened. She noticed something regular in a new way. Maybe it was a shaft of light that cut through a slot in the wall that she hadn’t noticed before.
Maybe the wind sang a new song through the branches of a tree that were just a little bit bigger than it had been the day before. Maybe there was a beautiful odor, a bloom out of season. Maybe an angel appeared. The story Mary returned with was that she had been visited by the Holy Spirit and was to give birth to a child, Emmanuel, the Messiah.
It sounds crazy to us, but the community in which Mary lived was a sect of Judaism called the Essenes, and they talked a lot about angels and miracles, and the presence of God, and the possibility of the Messiah.
Now Mary was engaged to a man named Joseph, a widower with a bunch of children. The news of her pregnancy probably caused Joseph to pause. But still, that night, he laid his head upon his pillow as he did every night. And in the morning he told of a dream: that an angel appeared and reassured him that everything was as it should be.
And so, Joseph and Mary settled into the regular routines of life together as they prepared to welcome the child. Then, in the ninth month of her pregnancy, an unexpected decree came from Caesar Augustus. He ordered that the entire world should be counted, and that this registration had to happen in one’s ancestral home. For Joseph, that meant Bethlehem, because he was of the household of David.
Now under normal circumstances, Joseph would have gone alone. He would have made the journey himself, while Mary stayed behind in Nazareth under the care of the local women, who would midwife her child into the world. That would have been the practical, safe, sensible, normal thing to do. But the Gospel tells us that Joseph “went to be registered with Mary.” Suddenly, what should have been routine, became unusual.
Now tradition tells us that Mary knew her Bible, So, she knew that the prophet Isaiah wrote: “A virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Emmanuel” (Isa 7:14). She knew that the prophet Micah wrote: “that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem” (Mic 5:2).
And so, within the ordinary rhythms of her life, sitting in a barn, being pregnant, knowing her Bible, a new part of God’s plan materialized for Mary, and she got on the donkey for the ten-day trip to Bethlehem. All the ordinary details of her life colluded to reveal God’s extraordinary love for the world through the birth of Jesus.
God had a plan. God has a plan. We are all part of it, revealed through the gifts we’ve been given, through the contexts of our lives, through our passions and abilities, all threaded together to reveal this plan imprinted upon the ponchos we wear in our everyday lives.
So, this Christmas Eve, I leave you with an invitation to wonder how that plan is being revealed in you. Tonight, I invite you to consider Mary, to consider the woman walking down the street, to consider Juan Diego, to consider your life and wonder how the plan of God is revealed through the love you share within the regular routines of your day.
For it is love, only love, that will save the world. That is what we celebrate tonight, how love came into the world in a way we could know and emulate by our own actions day in and day out…because that is how it works when you are the plan.
Merry Christmas.