Monday, December 20, 2010

Christmas Nativity 1 Year A, Luke 2:8-20

It's a long way from the Judean fields of those first shepherds to the roadside stall where Jeremy stands by the rented donkey with his staff and headgear pulling second shift. I remember on one such occasion our well-meaning sound guy put on “Jingle Bells”. That's a bit of a narrative disconnect – but then again, so is Matthew's lifting of Isaiah's snippet to make a case for virgin birth. Narrative disconnects are everywhere, not just in the way we use scripture. We spot them in the way scripture uses scripture. Like Derrida's postcards, our narratives are an unending series of transmissions whose sources are never clear. The threads we follow to “get it right” turn out be be broken. I rather like narrative disconnects. They remind us we do not authenticate the story, no matter how long we stand our shift in a shepherd's costume. Or whatever costume our fashion and circumstances dictate.

Our stories always have a breaking point where, at some level, the narrative collapses. I got a call two Sundays ago to a friend's house where the wife asked me to touch her husband to see if he was dead in his hospice bed. He was, although I wasn't sure. We called 911 for confirmation. That morning was the end of a sixty three year old saga of marriage. In the sermon a few days later I said it is God's story we are a part of. That saga continues. The shepherds, too, believed, in that apocalyptic moment of the breaking heavens that they were about to die. In a way, they did. Who they were and who they became we do not know. We know so little. Only that when the narrative breaks, God's spirit flows in the music of angel choirs. Anointed messengers appear at our door step. It happens.

Jeremy is a shepherd extra (you can't have too many shepherds in a living creche). His dad “encouraged” him to participate. Shepherds, unlike the other cast members, are free to wander. Jeremy ducks behind the rented donkey halfway through his shift to text. Nobody misses a shepherd. Does it break the flow? Yes, if the players really believe in reenactments. Next week Judith playing Mary is going to Shiloh Battlefield to be a Confederate matron. She'll be wearing running shoes under her hoop skirt. Is she any different than Jeremy? Or any of us who put on a robe – or do not, which is another kind of uniform – and step into a pulpit or behind an altar. We are surrounded by narrative disconnects.

In Pakistan Asia Bibi is up on blasphemy charges because of something she said as a Christian among her Muslim neighbors – purportedly insulting the prophet Muhammad. It is a capital offense. Fundamentalists are dancing in the streets with placards demanding her death, like Herod falling upon the innocents of Judea. These stories come way too soon on the heels of the beatific solace of the Bethlehem manger in the lectionary reenactments. Friday night and Saturday it's “Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright”, Sunday it's infanticide.

Jeremy's world is just as fractured as the world of those other shepherds. Just as terrifying. Just as wondrous. We have their testimony. We don't know what was in Jeremy's inbox. His dad may have known something we do not. The costume he is wearing may be his best hope as he pulls a loose hair from the donkey and sticks it in his blue jeans pocket under the robe.

© 2010 Andy Gay