Little Brown Jobs

Christmas Eve 2012

Luke 2: 1-20

For Christmas Eve, some preachers, aware that they will get some people in church they don’t normally see (those people who come on Christmas and Easter, which we call C&E’s, or Chreasters), take two tactics; one way to go on Christmas eve is to tell the whole story of Jesus, from birth to death, and what his story means. In other words, catechism with candles.

The other way to go, it seems to me, is to assume that everyone in the church already knows the significance of the event, the date, and at least a tenuous grip on the significance. Otherwise, you would not have come out tonight.

I’m one of the latter, so no crucifixion story.

There’s a story that I learned when I lived in Texas, and I can’t remember where I learned it. I can’t remember from whom I learned it, either. But I like it a lot, so I wanted to share it.

Once there was a man. He was a good man, supported his family, worked hard, was not held up by traditional roles. So we see him silhouetted in the kitchen window of his house one windy, snowy Christmas eve. He was washing the family’s dishes after their traditional Christmas eve meal, and the rest of the family had gone off to church for services. As he washed, he absentmindedly looked out the window, seeing the barn light shine in the yard in front of the barn door.

What caught his eye was a flock of birds, nothing remarkable about them, they were what birdwatchers called LBJ’s (Little Brown Jobs). They were pecking the ground under the light, and not finding much, since that was usually where the chickens would peck, too. They were hungry, they looked cold, and were dislodged by any decent gust of wind.

The man felt bad for these little insignificant birds, and dried off his hands. He went into the mudroom to get his coat and hat, a handful of chicken feed from the can by the door, and went out.

It was cold. He shivered, and he had on a coat and hat. The birds must be freezing.

He walked out the barnyard, and scattered the feed. The little birds swarmed the food and scattered it everywhere, some even blew away. Some did get eaten. But not enough to the man;s liking. He also felt the wave of heat that came off the barn, and he knew that all the horses and cows inside were making the barn nice and toasty. It would be great if he could get the LBJ’s inside. He walked back into the house, and grabbed some more feed, and began trying to set a trail for the birds from the yard to the now open barn door, which gave a brighter light.

With that light he could see that every time he tried to set a trail for the birds, they would swarm and scatter the feed, destroying every trace of a path. He tried several times, getting more frustrated every time. Then he tried to scare them into the barn, opening his coat and flapping it at the birds, trying to scare them into the barn. They flew everywhere EXCEPT where he wanted them to go. All he got was more frustrated, and a wet front to boot.

“Why can’t these birds just see what they need to survive? Why can’t they go into the barn like I want? Are there brains really so small? If I could just become a bird, I could convince them, and lead them into the barn…

And then he realized why Jesus was born.

That is what we celebrate on Christmas. We were given a fellow LBJ to follow into the barn.

Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord

December 23, 2012 Fourth Sunday of Advent

Luke 1:57-66

At this point we’ve all probably been to a concert, or a play, or a movie, so we’re all familiar with that feeling of anticipation we feel at that moment when the lights go down, the symphony has stopped tuning, or the warm up music in the area has turned off, but the performance hasn’t started yet.

That is what the fourth Sunday of Advent is. All the preparations have been made, all the players have been put into their places, but the drama has not yet started. But it’s about to.

John has been born. John has been named. He will grow up to play a specific role at a specific time, but that is in the future. It hasn’t happened yet.

When I was eight, or so, my father directed Godspell in the high school where he taught. (He taught at a high school in Napa CA that really is called Vintage High School, even now, and their colors really are burgundy and gold). I remember seeing the young man who played John, who seemed so old to me, even though he was all of seventeen, standing in a spotlight in the dark theatre, near the back doors, and doing a vocal approximation of a shofar. The he begins to sing:

Pre-hee-pare Ye the Way of the Lord, Pre-hee-pare Ye the Way of the Lord.

The fourth Sunday of Advent is just before that starts.

The curtain goes up on Christmas. And the play that teaches the world about the love of God starts then. The play that tells the world that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.

Because we didn’t understand. We needed to have the Word embodied for us. Wee needed to have a human being tell us, and not just tell, but show us the love of God, and show us that someone of flesh and blood could pull it off. Emmanuel, God on Earth, yes, but also a human being who could stay connected to God. And whether we feel we can pull that off too, or not, we know now that it is our job to try. That is who Jesus is for us. And that play begins at Christmas.

May you believe what you hear in the play. May you understand that WE are to prepare the way of the Lord as well, even though the actual play happened two thousand years ago, our play is about how Jesus Christ can be born in us, and carried into the world through us.

We are now the seventeen year old boy singing in the theatre. It doesn't matter whether we can carry a tune (well, it does a little, you don’t want to say just anything, present the gospel in a way that damages the message so it’s worth thinking about) but it doesn't change the fact that this is our call. We are the feet, the hands, the mind, the eyes and the heart of God. This is our call.
Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord.