WAITING ON GOD
The Rev’d Phillip Channing Ellsworth, Jr.
The Midnight Mass, 24th December 2017
Based on John 1. 1 – 14.

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” May I speak in the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We are made of waiting, every one of us. My daughter Gillian is great with child, her first, a son, expected 29th December. [Ed. note: Samuel Tamaoki was born on Twelfth Night, 5th January.] The baby boy in her womb is made of waiting. Our pageant’s baby Jesus, Maximillian, was made of waiting, as his mother Mariana can tell you. By the time we are grown up waiting is the one thing we know how to do. The most grown up of all of us is Mary Fay; she was born 15th July 1921. Just as we finished this pageant rehearsal yesterday, Mary died. She was waiting to be with her mother again.

We never stop waiting. We’re told that we don’t live often enough in the moment; the more I’ve grown the less anxious I am about that. When we give up trying, we are superb at it. We spend a quarter or more of our lives living in the moment, asleep. “Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care, / The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, / Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, / Chief nourisher in life’s feast.” [Shakespeare, MacBeth] A healthy soul has hopes, anticipates, pines, is always longing for something. That is life, get over it: looking forward for what we’ve got to do next, or looking backward with nostalgia or regret into what has passed. 

For weeks we have been making ready, preparing gifts for each other. Some, embassies of us all, prepared for this night by singing Christmas carols with those in prison at San Quentin. Some gathered in good cheer for St Lucie’s Day. Some of us will get to sing and eat with fifty homeless men this evening in Mill Valley. All of us, wherever we are, will be celebrating, having prepared food and drink to serve those we love and those to whom we have obligations. You prepared this pageant (thank you, Mr Jennings!), dressing up as angels, shepherds, inn keepers, prophets, priests, scribes, and magi, to hit your mark, deliver your lines, all of it because we have been waiting for Christmas. It’s here. What will it be like to have our waiting fulfilled?

Pregnant with the baby Jesus, when Mary went to visit her cousin Elizabeth, Elizabeth cried out when she saw her, and she said, “Blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” [Luke 1. 45] Mary had believed the announcement of the Archangel Gabriel, and her baby grew towards that fulfillment, towards the night of his birth. That night is tonight. 

Andrew Purvis, himself a writer, read to us the words of another messenger of God, the Gospel writer John. John sees in that moment of the baby’s birth a great stillness as heaven and earth coalesce and heavenly experience and earthly experience are wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. Eternity and time meet. The creator of all things becomes a part of his own creation. The Word which spoke everything into being becomes a baby without any words at all, without skills, without powers, helpless in the arms of his mother. God has emptied out his majesty and become a child in need.

Now it is our turn. We have been given this vulnerable God to care for. He is a little flame in a dark world full of greed and danger, a world which jockeys for power and uses children as one of its means towards dominance. It is Christmas night. The child is in your arms. What will you do next? He needs love. He has not even the words to ask for it. We are not waiting any longer. The glory of God is with us and asks for our care. 

During the twelve days of Christmas, at some point someone will show themselves undefended, helpless, awkward, preposterous, undignified, clumsy, undone. That person is Christ to you. Keep the flame of the Word in the world by your gentleness, your love, and your care for someone helpless this Christmas. You will see the fulfillment of God’s promise, ‘The Lord is with you’. You will be part of the glory which brings heaven and earth together. You will shelter the flame which shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.