Christmas Eve, Year B
December 24, 2008
The Rev. G. Hendree Harrison, Jr.
St. Paul's Episcopal Church


Christmas is looking for the baby. Christmas is a simple, celebratory search for an infant.
Christmas, at its very core, is seeking after Jesus Christ, God Among Us.
More and more, as the years pass, I think Christmas is not about finding answers to difficult questions. Questions like,
Why did my father die?
Why does the awful reign of poverty and hunger spin on so long?
Why do we persist at war and violence?
Why did the markets crash?
I don’t think Christmas answers these complicated “why” questions. I don’t know. Maybe you disagree?
Oh, I believe that there is provision for some of these “why” questions in our faith story, but Christmas is not the spot to stop for those answers. See, Christmas addresses the “where” questions. Where is the baby? Where is Jesus? Where is God?
I take a Christian magazine called Sojourners. On the cover of a recent issue there is a picture of a 100 dollar bill set against a black back ground, the money is on fire, flames consume and turn to ash half of the bill. In large plain white type above the burning money the headline reads, Where is God in All This?
It is obviously a question asked from the frustrating and complicated context of the current economic crisis. It is a Christmas question.
Where is God? It’s a question for the ages.
I don’t know, of course, if any of the shepherds had this question on their minds as they stood watch over their flocks in the middle of the fields in the middle of the dark night. But that is certainly a good setting for the question.
Can you imagine it? Imagine we were there. It’s a dark, cool night, you’re awake and watching over a huddled mass of animals who grunt and breathe quietly. The sky is well lit, not too bright, but lit well enough by starlight and the dim glow of the moon.
You look up over the flock into the distant heavens. And you wonder, maybe even ask aloud in the exhale of a breathe, Where is God? (Imagine you were there.)
And then a miracle.
A hole opens in the blanket of star spotted darkness that is this calm night, and an angel of the Lord steps through the opening, and it is the most wonderfully frightening, good, joyful thing you have ever seen or felt. For the rest of your life you will try to describe to your friends just what that moment of emergence was like, but you will never feel like you are able to do the moment justice with your clumsy human words.
Light spins off the angel, the night grows warm, the angel says, “don’t be afraid- I have good news.”
You can’t speak but you have never been more comfortable.
The angel says, “God is here.”
You mouth the question, “where?” Where is God?
You blink to see if you are dreaming. You are not dreaming. You are well awake. And now there is a great and growing crowd of angels hanging like so many elegant ornaments in the increasingly bright night sky. They are singing like nothing you have ever heard before or since.
Imagine you were there.
The angel choir sings as one brilliant, holy, layered voice with tone and color and depth like a box of the king’s royal jewels spilled all over the floor of heaven which is the sky above to us.
Their song is Hallelujah, and Praise to God, and Peace on Earth, and Hallelujah, Hallelujah!
You whisper again, Where is God?
The angel of Lord says, Go to Bethlehem.
The music looses you from it’s grip. The choir slips easily on the wings of Grace back through the hole in the sky. You turn with the other shepherds and you move in a huddled mass breathing and grunting quietly as you hurry across the fields toward Bethlehem where you find the baby, just as the angel said.
On one level it seems too simple, too strange. God has slipped into human skin and is now a baby in manger? God should be in a palace on a throne.
But on another level, a deeper level, you know it’s true. It’s simply true.
You have found God. And you go out from that place, you take leave of gentle Mary and sweet Joseph, the baby stays in the manger, but you feel somehow like he’s coming with you too, as you enter back into the dark night, back across the fields. Imagine you were there.
As you go, the angel song burns and plays in your heart and you sing. It’s your song now, you sing, Hallelujah Glory to God, Praise be to God Peace on Earth, Hallelujah, Hallelujah!
And there is no question. God is here.
Now, if only it were that simple for us. Well, the question hangs around see, for me at least, Where is God? Where is my angel choir? I’ve looked in hundreds of hidden corners. I’ve read complicated books and come up with complex theories and prayed long and winding prayers (preached long and winding sermons!) And still the question hangs around.
Where is God?
Well…..God showed up with his angel choir in my kitchen not too long ago. It was early evening, and a winter day, so it was dark and cold outside.
My wife, Kristin, Gracie, my three year old daughter, and I were warm inside our home. I was cooking, stirring a red sauce actually, slowly on the stove. Kristin was working in the den. And Gracie was sweeping. She has a toy cleaning set. She had in her hands her tiny broom and her tiny dustpan, and she was sweeping the kitchen and singing a little unintelligible song while I cooked supper.
Now, I am a preacher, of course, and I am almost always thinking at least in a small way about what to say. (I know, I’ve got issues…) I mean, what I will say to you. What will I say about God in our lives. How will I answer your question and mine – Where is God?
I was thinking along those lines when Gracie asked me a question.
She said, “Daddy?
I had my back to her as I stood at the stove stirring.
“Yes, baby.”
“Daddy, are you a church boy?”
I laughed. And I considered her question. I was standing at the stove thinking about God. “Yeah babe, I guess I am. I guess I am a church boy.”
“Daddy, what do you say to the people?”
(This is a true story.)
I started to answer then I caught myself. “What do you think I say?”
And she said it. Just like the angel choir and the shepherds.
Gracie said, “Daddy you tell them, Ha-lay-loooo-yah!
And the choir slipped into the warm evening atmosphere of our simple kitchen space and they sang and they sang, Hallelujah, and Praise to God, Glory to God, and Peace on Earth, Hallelujah, Hallelujah!
And on one level it seems too strange and too simple that God should push my child across the room with a broom to answer my question, Where are you?
Shouldn’t God write into that fancy magazine I take to make his response to the pressing issue of day about all our burning money? Shouldn’t God inhabit the voice of some senator, or take the podium on the White House lawn? Shouldn’t God have a gavel and a throne?
You may think yes. You may think that wasn’t God in kitchen. You may think that was just a precocious little girl saying something clever.
But I’m pretty sure it was God come to give a Christmas gift of presence. And to say in a simple way, don’t make looking for me so complicated. I’m here. I’m here in the voice of your child. I’m here in the love you share with your wife, your friends and your family. I won’t be in that magazine. I don’t answer for Wall Street. I am God not a businessman or a politician.
I’m here in the songs you sing that make your heart spin with Alleluias.
And to us gathered here tonight God might say, I’m here in this still moment on Christmas Eve where you’ve come from the warmth of your homes across the cold fields to the warmth of your church home all too look for the baby.
Friends, what I mean to say, is don’t make it too complicated. Looking for God, don’t make it too complicated. If we find ourselves, in the middle of our Christmas plans, unhappy, bitter, worried and feeling bad because we’ve gotten tangled up in a messy web of how to be, what to say, who to see, how to act, and what will be, and the question is droning on and on as if on a reverberating loop Where is God? Where is God? Where is God? Then, we’ve made it too complicated.
God is not hiding. Look close to home. God is here, in the simple Christmas space where one heart sings love to another heart, Hallelujah, and Praise to God, Glory to God, and Peace on Earth, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Amen.