"Earthquakes and Emmanuel"

Luke 2: 1-20

Dec. 24, 2020 

Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood

First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS

The Good News of Jesus Christ begins and ends with earthquakes and angels. There’s the actual, literal earthquake at the very end of the gospel of Matthew: After the Sabbath, the women go to Jesus’s tomb and we are told there’s a violent earthquake as an angel descends from the heavens and rolls away the stone at the entrance of the tomb. The angel says, of course, what angels always say. Who remembers what the angels always say? Type it into the chat if you remember.

That’s right. “Fear not, Mary! Do not be afraid.”

I guess angels must be used to humans looking like this (big eyes) because that’s pretty much always their opening line. 

Many years earlier, an angel appeared to another Mary. The angel Gabriel finds a teenage girl in a town called Nazareth and bestows greetings of God’s favor upon her. She looks at him like this (side eye) and he says to her, “Fear not, Mary! Do not be afraid.”

And then he brings the earthquake: News of an unplanned pregnancy. Under unusual, unbelievable circumstances. Total disruption. Total disbelief. Total disarray. 

Fear not, Mary. Do not be afraid. 

Easy to say when you’re an angel, I suppose. But harder to do when you’re a human. 

Every single one of us gathered here tonight knows what it’s like to have that feeling Mary must have had when she learned her life was being turned upside down. An accident. A loss. A diagnosis. An unplanned pregnancy. A betrayal. A mistake. An act of violence. A natural disaster. A pandemic. 

Total disruption. Total disbelief. Total disarray. 

There are these things that come along in our lives and just shake the foundations, aren’t there? Earthquakes. When the very ground beneath our feet goes wobbly and we lose our footing and we can’t quite tell which way is up and which is down and we’re just trying desperately to find our North Star so we can refocus and catch our breath and stand back up on our feet. When we’re just desperately willing the world to slow down, stop spinning, speed up, go back to normal. 

Earthquakes. When the things that we thought were certain are suddenly not so certain after all. 

My guess is most of us have learned more about uncertainty in 2020 than we ever wanted to learn. We felt the assuredness of the ground beneath us give way. We lost our footing. We lost sleep. We lost loved ones. We may have even lost hope at times. At times this year has felt like one excruciatingly-long earthquake-unfolding-in-slow-motion. 

And now here we are on Christmas Eve. It’s not like it usually is. We aren’t crowded into our sanctuary with our candlelight and children in their Christmas finest. Many of us won’t be able to sit around the tree tomorrow with the people we love most. Instead we’ll be Zooming or quickly sending a hug from six feet away behind a mask while standing on each other’s porches. 

Can this be Christmas at all? When the ground has shifted beneath us? When our traditions and rituals are disrupted? When we still wake up some mornings in disbelief at all that is unfolding? When our hearts are in disarray? 

Come with me to the manger, friends. Draw near on this silent night as we crouch down low to greet Newborn Love. See the exhausted mother as she holds Love to her breast. Look at the furrows in the worried father’s brow as he brings another blanket, another glass of water, another prayer of thanksgiving. 

This is Christmas: A small circle of love that disrupts completely. 

A gasp of realization, the shock of disbelief as our hearts grow four times larger than we ever thought they could. The disarray of new life come to find us in the most inconvenient of ways - in the blood, the sweat, the tears, the stink, the messiness of being human. 

This is Christmas: God come to us, among us, in us, through us. Emmanuel. God with us disrupting - birthing the Beloved Community among us. Pulling down the mighty from their thrones and lifting up the lowly. Filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich away empty. Bringing good news to the poor, release to the captives, the end to all oppression and fear. 

Emmanuel. 

God with us in our churches, in our homes, on the streets. God with us the children and the elders. God with us the uncertain and the over-confident. God with us the downtrodden, the left-out, the reviled. God with us the comfortable, the celebrated, the admired. God with us the grieving, the angry, the depressed. God with us the content, the peace-filled, the elated. 

Emmanuel. 

Good news for all people everywhere. And that means you. 

Merry Christmas.