A Christmas Eve Sermon

Greetings, Sermon Digesters:

I am aware of how many of my colleagues in ministry prepare a written version of their sermons for distribution to eagerly waiting parishioners who wish to see in print the words they heard only moments before. Like stockings on Christmas Eve, copies are left with care in hope that a broader distribution of proclaimed word may fill many a non-attending heart.

As you may know, I have resisted distributing printed copies of my sermons, even though they are occasionally (read “rarely”) requested. Three reasons keep me from translating pulpiteering into pamphleteering. The first has to do with the fundamental orality of the preacher’s craft. Sermons are oral presentations and often defy translation into narrative print—the delivery is as much a part of the message as the content itself. I’ve known many preachers whose homilies read better than they sound, and vice versa, but few whose messages carry the same strength in both spoken and printed formats. Second has to do with the manuscript from which I speak, which is often sketchy, full of misspellings and punctuationally challenged. Since I write my sermons at 5:30 on Sunday mornings, I’ve little time to wade through all the errors to produce a document decipherable to anyone but the author, and once I’ve delivered the sermon, I seldom wish to retrace my steps, because on second review, I discover my words were way less engaging that I originally thought. The third reason for not printing sermons has to do with my own fragile narcissism; there’s nothing more discouraging than seeing stacks of unclaimed sermon copies piling up on a table in the narthex because no one has the heart to toss them into recycling or the desire to commend them to other readers.

All this preacher insider discussion leads me to why today’s Monday Musing is a digest of my Christmas Eve meditation.

I’m hoping this particular sermon will be an exception. I truly wish to share again the thoughts I offered at our Service of Lessons and Carols, and I think you may wish to linger over these words, perhaps even share them with someone who may be encouraged by the content. So, with apologies to Jen Stockbridge, our Administrative Assistant who provided invaluable edits, I offer the following representation of my Christmas Eve sermon, in slightly digested form.

   

And so, we have arrived at the manger together with shepherds but well ahead of the Wise ones.

We know well how they got here, how angels informed them of a birth: “No Fear, Good News, Babe Born in Bethlehem, The Messiah”. They “went with haste, found the babe swaddled in cloth dozing in a manger”.

But how did we get here?

What drove us this cold night to this place? What angels told you to come? Did you come with haste?

In a few moments we will hear again the penultimate reading from tonight’s lessons, the continuation of the Gospel of Luke where the shepherds return to their sheep, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen, and recount to everyone as it had been told unto them.

But for us? How shall we depart?

When it’s all over, what will be our report as we return to our sheep abiding in our fields?

If you’ll indulge me a bit, I need to let you know that the past several months I’ve been thinking a lot about belief. For those of you who are visiting this evening, let me apologize—this may not be what you expected for a Christmas Eve homily. You see, in the spring of 2022, my wife, Dani, was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer. What started with a pea-sized lump in her left breast a little over a year ago had expanded into a shot-put-sized growth while she helplessly attempted to get the attention of some doctor who could fit her in, some appointment somewhere.

Never mind the reasons, the unreturned calls, the hours-long, phone-hold music queues ending in disconnection. “Not seeing any new patients.” “We have an opening for a scan in August, yes, that’s ten months away but we’re all booked, don’t know what to tell you.”

Finally, a cancellation, an opening.

For those who have been with us on this journey, many Sundays have felt less like church and more like weekly installments on the Krogh cancer-care caravan.

If you’re visiting, know this—the people around you are long-suffering and kind, so very kind.

There’s a numbing chill when a medical and radiation oncologist along with a surgeon speak with one voice, “This is cancer, this is serious, we won’t know the outcome until we get there.”

It’s easy to wonder, what kind of angels are these? They herald news, but not of great joy. We were not surprised, but like the shepherds, we were terrified.

I love the King James Version: we were sore afraid. I know I was afraid, and, given the rapidly expanding neoplasm, I know Dani was sore.

Then came the appointments, the attempted contacts, the navigators and insurance representatives, the call centers in Iowa suggesting that we go with haste to Schaumburg because that looked close to us on their map (I guess they use a globe; we preferred Oak Lawn). The scans and chemicals with pages and pages of dire side effects, many of which included even more suffering and the specter of death, the medicines and counter-medications, some over-the-counter. And the friends half-jokingly recommending nausea relief from substances obtained under-the-counter.

A swirling diagnosis, a lengthy treatment plan.

What’s left hanging is the third leg of that important tripod: diagnosis, treatment, prognosis.

“Prognosis?”

“We’ll not talk about that right now.”

And through it all, prayers, cards, encouraging gifts, calls and countless offers, “If you need anything, and I mean anything... just let me know!”

The anything we truly needed was to know what was going to happen, but our light only shown so far and faded into a murky future.

What to believe?

Much of the literature reads like a racing form—odds on those who will finish the race, one in five, eight in ten (25 or 6 to 4?). But there’s a reason they’re called odds, because one never consults them when things aren’t odd.

What to believe? Power of prayer? Sure, pray away, but I must confess that on a clockwise basis, I’ve spent way more time watching Me TV reruns in waiting rooms than on my knees petitioning the Lord.

Do I not believe?

I grew up being told that the world’s population was divided in two: believers and non-believers. The first group was heaven-bound, the second was hell-bent. We knew we were on the Lord’s side, and the only question was, on which side are you?

Somehow, I also got the message that one could get extra points by kicking non-believers over the line and into the net of believers. It was as if we were securing our place on the eternal roster through a program of commission. Belief was understood as a single decision, a moment in time. There was a before and an after. “Thanks be to God you weren’t struck by a bus back in the before days—one swerve of the wheel and you’d find yourself shoveling coal in the brimstone mines for all eternity.”

We had made it, and everything was going to be okay! Bring on the bus now, I’m already saved. Why? Because I’m a believer (couldn’t leave her if I tried). Except that’s not how belief seems to work for me.

Over the past year, things in our home haven’t been driven by belief, but by the requirements of the next infusion, the next blood draw, the next medication.

No Helen Steiner Rice poetry about “God’s master plan” and the unleashed power that “shall bring to us a miracle”. Nope, just one more trip to the pharmacy, somewhat pleased that we had met our co-pay months ago and today’s prescription is bafflingly free. 

On the other hand, I don’t think you could call me a non-believer. There’s no scoffing at God’s plan, no “Why Dani?” or “Why me?” No shaking my fist at the heavens, asking why God’s plan included a repulsive oncogenic growth.

By obsessing over questions of belief, I wonder if we’ve missed the shepherds’ witness. At no point are we informed that the shepherds “believed” anything. They were told that something amazing was happening, they went and saw what had come to pass, and returned with praises over what they had seen, but we are told nothing about their belief.

They did not return to their sheep proclaiming their unconditional trust in a divine savior who had arrived in human flesh, bridging the gap between a righteous God and sinful humanity. Nothing about the ‘ground of all being’, the ontological anxiety soothed by revelatory incarnation bringing imputed righteousness to their unworthy souls.

No, they just went home a little sleepy, quite amazed and happy, so very happy.

I think that’s how it works, not with a heels-dug-in belief generated by the deep conviction of being saved and rescued from the former ignorance of the damned.

Likewise, I’m not so sure we need to cling to good attitude. Such frequent instruction seems to suggest that somehow, if we’re perky enough, God has to make things go our way. “Keep your spirits up! Positive thinking will make you well!” But it turns out God sometimes heals people with bad attitudes too.

No, it’s somehow less than belief or attitude, and at the same time so much more. Maybe, just maybe, I’m beginning to get the point.

This Christmas, we are thankful because we now have a prognosis, one that puts a smile on her physicians’ faces. Clean scans and clear pathology reports match the outcomes of our most earnest petitions. Yes, there are still more waiting rooms ahead with basic-cable reruns blaring from flat-screens, but somehow things are less anxious. We’ve moved from treatment to prevention, and for that we are most grateful.

I am learning it is not either/or. There is power in prayer and in chemo and immunotherapy, healing in intercession and a surgeon’s scalpel, miracles through faith and from a radiologist’s focused beam.

Had the outcome been less encouraging, had the cancer continued despite her physicians’ best efforts, I wish to be clear. I would not jettison prayer any more than I would give up on medical professionals. Both bring desired results for sinners and saints alike, and as we all well know, neither medicine nor meditation mandatorily mediate miracles. The difference between procedures and prayers is while one does its odds-laden work, the other reminds us with certainty who is waiting with us.

For the shepherds on that cold winter’s night that was so deep, little had changed. Morning still came with harsh conditions, with hungry bleating sheep who needed green pastures and still waters. But for those who watched their flocks by night, because they came and saw as they had been told, everything changed. They were amazed, they were happy, their souls were restored. It didn’t matter what they believed; we only know this: they rejoiced because they knew they were not alone.

And as we depart this night, go amazed, go rejoicing because of what we have seen and heard, God with us, Emmanuel! Amen.

Rejoicing and amazed, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor