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  • BUUC Home
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  • About the BUUC
    • Our History
    • BUUC Committees >
      • Executive Committee
      • Worship Committee
      • Membership Committee
      • The Women's Alliance
      • Flower Committee
  • Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
  • Stewardship and Gift Policy
    • Saints We've Known
    • Charitable Giving and the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
  • Sermons 2022-23
    • A Waste of time
    • The Seventh Principle
    • Make Light of It
    • A Turn of the Screw
    • America: Part II
    • What Do You Expect?
    • Good Mourning
    • Beyone Repair?
    • No Signal
    • Absolutely, Maybe, Definitely Not
    • Do Guardian Angels Exist?
    • Right Here
  • Our Covenant
  • Minister's Welcome
  • Religious Exploration
  • Music & Choir
  • We Rise: Social Justice Resources
  • Newsletters
  • Church Calendar
  • Unitarian Universalism
  • Driving Directions
  • Photos of Us
  • Making the BUUC Accessible
  • LOVEUU
  • Community Resources
    • Mental Health Providers, Worcester MA
    • Southern Worcester County Parent Guide
  • Contact Us
    • Sermons 2021-22
  • Sermon Archives
    • Finding Joy in Uncertain Times
    • The Arithmetic of Joy
    • Of Muck and Martyrs
    • Doing Dishes
    • Idle Worship
    • The Fear of the Refugee
    • It's Not Just You
    • If We Choose
    • Lazy Busy
    • A Most Human Season
    • Running on Empty
    • Alone Together
    • Come Home
    • Winter Warmth
    • How Big Is Your Circle?
    • Thanksgiving Life
    • Kurt Vonnegut: Humanist Hero
    • In Costume
    • Again
    • Borderland
    • The Geometry of Life
    • Transformation and Growth
    • Come Build a Land
    • Our Brains, Our Minds and Our Hearts
    • Gifts
    • Repairers of the Breach
    • The Times They Are A-Changin'
    • Mission Possible
    • It Matters
    • Thanksgiving Reflection
    • Shoes That Fit
    • Winter
    • Ignorance, Answers, and Bliss
    • Questions, Questions
    • Living to the Point of Tears
    • Lost in the Shuffle: UU's Less Popular Principle
    • On the Turning Away
    • A Matter of Degree
    • A Collection of Near Death Experiences
    • I Know Her So Well, I Think. I Thought.
    • Faith-based Resilience
    • To Abet Creation
    • Who Cares?
    • A Matter of Life and Depth
    • Pass/Fail
    • Enough
    • O Holy Light
    • With New Eyes
    • Coming Alive
    • Beyond Words
    • Becoming
    • A Miracle Even Thomas Jefferson Could Embrace
    • Fear Not!
    • The Miracle of Change
    • Meeting Grace
    • R-E-S-P-E-C-T
    • Serving with Grace
    • The Pursuit of Happiness
    • When Heresy Met Sally
    • The Souls of All Living Creatures
    • What Are You Looking For?
    • Beloved
    • Let Me Count The Ways
    • Happiness
    • Chosen
    • Faith and Belief
    • Room To Grow
    • Blessed Fools
    • Don't Be a Superhero
    • Getting There from Here
    • Unfinished Business
    • Universalism's Origen
    • Yearn to Learn
    • Beauty Saves
    • Commentary on Freedom
    • Being Human: Religious Community in a Plastic Age
    • Questionable Certainties and Faithful Doubts
    • Commentaries on Murphy's Law
    • Children of a Lesser God
    • Fragile Nets of Meaning
    • Life Incarnate
    • So You Want to Be Happy
    • A Year's End Resolution
    • Where Stars Are Born
    • Thanking Eve
    • Anger, Our Teacher
    • Everlasting Punishment
    • Comprehending Moral Imperatives in a Me-centered World
    • Promises Kept
    • Dancing With The Stars: Science and Religion
    • Two Steps and Missteps: Church Membership for Human Beings
    • Light of the World
    • Dear God
    • Imago Hominis
    • CESA: Reflections on Drug Addiction
    • Falling in Love Again
    • How Does Your Garden Grow
    • Repent! No Guilt Trip Required
    • Go Out into the World
    • Thanks-living
    • Life and Not Life
    • Guilty As Charged
    • Dare To Hope
    • Don't Forget To Chew
    • Break the Silence - Stop the Violence
    • Living Among Strangers
    • What Is Religion Anyway?
    • East of Eden
    • Praying Attention
    • Wholly Human
    • The Healing Power of Forgiveness
    • All I Want for Christmas
    • Let It Be...Let It Go
    • Why Not?
    • People Like You
    • Vulnerable Trust
    • Thin Places
    • Now What?
    • Courageously Humble
    • The Last Butterfly
    • The Good, The Bad, and The Whole
    • Sacred Souvenirs
    • Made Whole
    • This Wild and Precious Life
    • Fragile Nets of Meaning
    • Where Our Future Can Begin
    • Taking Stock: Managing Our Spiritual Inventory
    • To Convert Life into Truth
    • Are We There Yet?
    • Family Matters
    • Ordinary Saints
    • All I Wanted Was Everything
    • Giving Thanks
    • To Be or Not To Be
    • Entering the Christmas Story
    • A Great Light
    • What's Real?
    • Troubling the Water
    • The Amazing Mr. Wedgewood
    • Lend Me Your Ears
    • Work That Is Real
    • Happy Melba Toast Day
    • The Great Pacific Garbage Dump
    • Plastics, Benjamin!
    • Surprise Beginnings
    • A Place at the Table
    • Norbert Capek’s Flower Communion: A Call To Honor Life
    • Voices of God
    • Hold On To What Is Good
    • The Little Stone Church That Rocks
    • What Would Jean-Luc Do?: A Tribute to Humanist Hero Gene Roddenberry
    • From Who am I? to Whose are We?
    • Turning
    • Spirituality
    • R & R
    • Spritual F-Words
    • Does Anyone Really Like Herding Cats?
    • Prepare to Be Amazed
    • The Greatest Gift
    • The Impossible Will Take A Little While
    • Taking Sides: Journey to the Center of the Universe
    • Help Wanted, Apply Within
    • Two Truths & Plastics and Water Don't Mix
    • The Third Conversation
    • Good People >
      • UU You >
        • Twitter and Covid and Wall Street, Oh, my!
        • I Do Believe in Spooks >
          • Holy Homophones >
            • What's in a Name?
            • So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye!
            • Open-Mindedness, As Assigned
            • Going on a Journey
            • Cheap Love
            • Nonproductive Delight
            • The Persistence of Memory
            • Thoughts about the Historical Jesus
            • Lindens and Tiarella and Bearberry, Oh My!
            • Season's Greetings
            • I Still Have A Dream
            • Peace Corps - A Lesson in Caring
            • Spiritual Engineering
            • Thanks for the Memories
            • Our Stories, Ourselves
            • Anxious Gardeners
            • The Best Sermon Ever!
            • UUnited
            • We Are Courageous
            • A Right Way to Be Wrong
            • Sacred Ideals
            • This Wild and Precious Life Revisited
            • 20/20
            • Home
            • What About Now?
        • Fragile
        • Time Ravel
        • Now Is Not the Time for Hope
        • The G Word (It's Probably Not what You Think)
    • No Thanks, I'll Walk
    • Be the Change
    • I Don't Know
    • What Lies Within
    • Guest Perspective
    • Growing Panes
    • De Colores
    • Roots and Wings
BROOKFIELD UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH

Entering the Christmas Story
The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Homily “Blue” Holiday Vespers
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church

December 15, 2013

I begin tonight’s reflection with what some might call a confession.  Although I am now 44 years old, I still like watching the old clay-mation Christmas shows from my childhood…Santa Claus is Coming to Town, the The Year Without a Santa Claus, and my all-time favorite, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  

Now Rudolph is an unlikely hero. He is by all accounts, a misfit. He’d like to fit in, but instead he stands out, or more accurately is pushed out by those around him who are unable or perhaps unwilling to recognize their kinship with him. 

Christmas is just a few days away now and I wonder about those among us, who, like Rudolph, stand out or are feeling pushed out in the midst this most visible, and commercialized of Christian holidays, a time of year where joy and goodwill seem almost mandatory.

I wonder, for example, what this time of year is like for people of faiths other than Christianity…or no particular faith of all, or for folks estranged from family and friends…and I especially wonder about  people for whom Christmas is not a joyous time of year, but a painful one, fraught with sadness, uncertainty, or even fear.  Perhaps some of you here in our sanctuary tonight are feeling left out or pushed out because you don’t quite fit or feel the “Christmas spirit” handed down or marketed to us.

Christian or not, most of us don’t likely associate the Christmas story, that is, the story of Jesus’ birth with feelings of isolation, sadness, uncertainty, or fear.  And yet it is all there. 

“Do not be afraid” says the angel of the Lord to Joseph; “Fear not” says the angel Gabriel to Mary; “Fear not”, says the angel of the Lord to the shepherds abiding in the fields; and Herod…we’re told Herod was “troubled” or afraid we might say, upon hearing of the birth of Jesus. 

While the story of Jesus’ birth as told in gospels of Matthew and Luke and conflated in church pageants and Hollywood alike into a single narrative can at times seem an impossibly fanciful tale, it is in fact, a profoundly human story… in which the vulnerability and resiliency of the human spirit are lifted up…It is a story with the potential to meet us wherever we are in our own lives.

I invite you now for a moment, as much as your able, to let go of any expectations you or others might have of yourself around Christmas and enter into the story with me…

Contemplating the familiar narrative with a spacious heart and mind… we can begin to see why the angels say to Joseph, Mary and the Shepherds, “Fear not!” or “Do not be afraid.”  For in announcing the birth of Jesus, they are announcing an event that will change everything…for some the child’s birth has been long awaited or hoped for, and for others it is a confusing or even dreaded event.  We know from our own experiences that change, welcome or not, is often scary.  Even Herod, a king, is shaken by news of Jesus’ birth, for this little baby, the wisemen tell him, is said to be the “King of the Jews.” 

Now, ask yourself, Who are you in the Christmas story? 

Are you an angel, persistent, even forceful in your optimism, trying to ease the minds and warm the hearts of troubled family and friends, a messenger of hope perhaps for a loved one who is sick or hurting…in the hospital or nursing home.  Are you Joseph, faced with a difficult, and let’s face it, confusing situation, not sure what to do, perhaps tempted to run, but feeling like this time something is calling you to let the situation unfold and trust in your ability handle it? 

Perhaps you are Mary, bearing the burden of expectations… your own and that of others; carrying mixed feelings of joy and apprehension, or as if the weight of the world is on your shoulders as you attempt to meet the demands of being a parent, lover, caregiver or friend? 

Maybe you are a shepherd or a wiseman, going about your business and suddenly finding your routine interrupted by something you didn’t ask for, something beyond your control, something that compels you get up and seek meaning in unfamiliar or humble places?  Or maybe you feel most like Herod, troubled…perhaps saddened, frightened or angered by change that threatens your very identity and the order of your world, not unlike a separation or divorce…a new diagnosis, uncertain prognosis or even death? 

Which, if any of these people from the Christmas story, are you at this moment?  Do you recognize yourself or identify with some of the emotions present in this story?   

We’re so used to being told how we should feel on Christmas…joyful, hopeful, grateful, that this story, steeped in the drama of the human experience, has been diluted in a bath of sentimentality.

But the reality is sometimes in this season of bright stars, warm candles and twinkling lights, we find ourselves standing in the shadows, dwelling in darkness...perhaps afraid, unsure, lonely, or sad. This is part of the human experience and the Christmas story as much as joy, gratitude and hope.  Most, if not all, of us have walked landscapes in our lives where even the smallest of dreams struggle to take root in the arid soil of its unforgiving terrain. If you are such a place right now, it’s okay, you are not alone. 

By entering the Christmas story as we are right now rather than how we think or have been told we should be in this season we make room for and honor our vulnerability as human beings and in so doing we may come to see our own life or situation reflected in the experience of Joseph or Mary, the shepherds, or wise men or Herod; we may come to recognize our own fears, uncertainty, and confusion in theirs and we just might also begin to discern hope in the most unexpected, fearsome, and humbling experiences of life, not unlike the birth, messy and miraculous, of a helpless little baby on a dark night long ago.

May it be so.

Amen and Blessed Be

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