Sermon by Mission Center President and Financial Officer Glenn Johnson
December 20, 2020
Christmas is Coming. As a child growing up, my grandparents always stayed at our home for Christmas. My Mom’s father, Charles Cotton, was born in London England in 1894. He landed in the poorhouse at age 5 where his father died, and because his mother worked as a char woman and had three daughters to care for, my grandfather was raised from the age of 6 in Mayford School for Boys, a residential orphanage and then shipped to Canada at age 15 to work on a farm as an indentured servant. He was beaten and whipped and escaped to the neighboring farm where he worked until he could move to the town of London Ontario and get work as a baker, one of the skills he learned at the Mayford School.
Years later, those baking skills delighted us because he would always make the dinner rolls for our Christmas dinner. If we asked him for his recipe, he would say, well you take a 50 pound sack of flour…” Fortunately, he knew how to cut down the proportions when he baked for his family.
Every year at Christmas he would take me aside and say, Glenn I have something to tell you, and then he would recite a poem he learned in the boys school.
Christmas is coming, the pigs are getting fat
Please to put a penny in the old man’s hat;
If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do,
And if you haven’t got a ha’penny then God bless you!
That word, ha’penny is short for half penny. So as a child I always thought it was funny, there’s no such thing as a half penny. I was probably 12 before I realized that in England at the time my grandfather grew up, there was such a small coin. They must have been really poor, I thought, if they used half pennys.
Some of you may have heard that poem with the words “the goose is getting fat” but my grandfather’s version, perhaps a reflection of being raised in an orphanage with a couple hundred other boys, was the pigs are getting fat.
Grandad was always filled with mirth, at all times of year, but especially at Christmas. Whatever neglect or abuse he faced was never apparent in his approach to the world. He was a simple, loving man who never met a stranger. He could carry on a conversation with anyone.
Earlier this year, when I was searching for images to use in our worship services, I came across this image. A meal for poor people in London, a ha’penny dinner. Suddenly the poem I had heard as a child took on an alternative meaning.
If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do, if you haven’t got a ha’penny then God bless you!
Christmas is a time of abundant generosity. If you can pay for a meal with a penny, wonderful, if you’ve only got a half penny, that will do. And even if you have nothing, you are welcome at the table. The feat of Christmas is coming, and we say Yes to everyone!
Even in this year, when we will be more isolated in terms of physical distance, let us remember all those in need and welcome them with the love of Christmas. Let us say yes to Christmas.
Our scripture from Luke on this fourth Sunday of Advent also gives us a story of Yes!
Luke 1:26-38
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.’ Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her.
Mary’s response: ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ was a Holy “Yes!” to a life changing experience. It is curiously placed on this Fourth Sunday of Advent, this period of preparation and expectation of the coming of Jesus, the Messiah. Because it is the story of the Annunciation or the announcement to Mary that she would conceive a child. It might seem more appropriate to read this scripture on March 25th, nine months before Christmas, if all we were concerned about was the calendar. But Mary’s “Holy Yes” is a legend of accepting God’s call. The annunciation is not just a story of a miracle, but a story about how a young person can see through the impossible to say yes to God.
On more than one of my trips to Israel, I visited the town of Nazareth in Galilee. Today it sprawls across the hills and is home to thousands. In Jesus times, it would have been a small village. Today it is filled with hundreds or thousands of tourists every day and the primary trade is selling souvenirs. In Jesus time it would have been a quiet town, a safe place to raise a child, out of the way of the troubled Galilean plain where so many battles and skirmishes had taken place over the centuries.
My visit in Nazareth began typically enough in a tourist shop because that’s where the bus stopped. But I decided to walk up the hill to the Church of the Annunciation, which is technically a patriarchal Basilica in Catholicism. It is a massive church that dominates the landscape in Nazareth. Operated by the Roman Catholic church, it features in the courtyard’s entryway and elsewhere the typical Jerusalem Cross cradled in outstretched arms of the announcing angel, the Jerusalem cross, consists of a large Greek cross surrounded by four smaller Greek crosses, one in each quadrant.
One way of looking at it is that Christ is represented by the central cross, surrounded by the four evangelists, represented by four smaller crosses. Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word of God, is proclaimed through the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
The Gospel is likewise represented by the central cross, surrounded by the four directions, represented by the four smaller crosses. The Gospel is proclaimed to the four corners of the earth, to the north, south, east and west.
I have to admit that my visit to the Church of the Annunciation was filled with skepticism. How could they possibly know the precise place where the Angel Gabriel visited Mary? My viewpoint changed as I entered the courtyard, not because I saw any evidence that this was the exact spot, but rather because I saw an amazing display of faith. In the courtyard, there were scores of icons lining the inner and outer courtyard walls, unlike most Catholic and Orthodox churches that I had visited where the icons represent an almost dizzying array of Saints, Martyrs and biblical characters, each of these icons depicted the same thing. Mary and the baby Jesus. The Madonna and Child. Or sometimes Mary and the angel Gabriel or just Mary alone. They had been sent from all over the world. Each country had been asked to send an icon made by a local artist. Many of them were mosaics, but the Madonna and child was also depicted with metal, paint, glass, ceramic, wood, and clay from every continent, every country where the Catholic church had presence from Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas, and the islands of the Sea.
Some were so priceless or fragile that they had to build an adjoining Upper Church of the Annunciation to contain them. The depiction of Mary from the US was a massive modern art relief made of titanium metal over a very colorful background, quite unusual, harsh and dramatic. But most countries depicted Jesus and Mary softly in their own way, quite often as representative of their local ethnicity, Japanese, African, Pacific Islander, and so on.
This place reminds us that we as humans were created in God’s image and that God is the source of amazing and beautiful diversity.
Regardless of whether they had found the exact spot for the story told in the Bible, they had created a testimony of faith from the four corners of the earth that allows every child to see themselves reflected in the Christ child, that allows every mother to see herself reflected in Mary, the miraculous mother of God.
Because somewhere near this place, tradition has it that Mary was told that she would give birth to “the Son of God.”
And also, somewhere near this place was the synagogue in Nazareth, where Jesus would have years later made his announcement reading from the Isaiah scroll that on that day, Isaiah’s Scripture had been fulfilled…
Standing in Nazareth, you know that you are near the synagogue where Jesus announced his mission and the place where according to tradition Mary experienced the annunciation – depicted today at the Basilica of the Annunciation with its Jerusalem Cross and the artwork from the four corners of the earth — artwork that shows that the Isaiah scripture had indeed been fulfilled. The gospel had indeed been proclaimed to the four corners of the earth. The poor of the earth had indeed been liberated. But it is a work that is not finished. Jesus mission birthed in Nazareth requires our Holy Yes!
Like Karoline Lewis, a Professor at Luther Seminary, I found that: “Reading the Annunciation to Mary and Jesus’ sermon side-by-side, in Nazareth, makes you realize that these were life-changing moments for Mary and Jesus. In fact, perhaps “life-changing” is an understatement — and that’s saying something. Life-changing is a pretty radical claim. When your life is altered, transformed, reborn, well, that’s a rather big deal. We need to take seriously what we mean when we say something, some event, or some one, is life-changing. A life change brings about the alternate, which for many of us seems so out of the range of possibility — release from our captivity, sight when we have been blind, generosity when we have hoarded, belonging when we have known isolation.
Those to whom Jesus preached his first sermon? They didn’t need a better life. A rehabilitated life. An improved life. They needed their lives to be turned upside down so that what was old knows only newness again.”
Like you and I, Mary may have been ordinary, a person of common origin. Like those poor children at the penny dinner or the billion poor in our world. But in saying yes to the mission of Jesus Christ Mary says yes to turning the world upside down. Something magnificent has happened to her, her “soul cries out with a joyful shout” for the world is about to turn.
Let us anticipate the birth of a Savior who is Jesus, Christ the Lord. Let us respond with a Holy Yes! For the world is about to turn. Let all be seen as they are in truth: reflections of the image of God. And let all be welcomed at the table as they are in truth: children of God. And in this coming Christmas, of all Christmases, let us hear the story once again of the birth of our Savior who is Jesus Christ our Lord. I hope you all can join us for the Christmas Eve Service to hear once again the story of God’s love made real. The Advent of the Lord is Upon Us. The World is About to Turn.