The Work of Christmas
Prepared message given as part of Three Rivers worship on Zoom, 26 December 2024.
I mentioned that I don't quite have a message, but I have been wrestling with some questions that I would love to share with you as we settle into worship this morning.
Probably you are aware that traditionally Quakers don't "keep days." Friends set aside the practice of following what other Christian churches call the liturgical calendar of Christmas and Eastertide, based on their belief, based on their experience, that the inbreaking Spirit could come at any time, and that to set apart one day as more holy or more special than another might actually preclude our being present to and listening for that inbreaking Spirit. Quakers also were much more steeped in scripture in their daily lives than I am. So, for me, I appreciate that liturgical rhythm as a kind of touchstone. As a way to remind myself of that ancient story of God's people, the journey that God's people have made with God through the ages and continue to make now.
And we have just come through the season of Advent and into the season of Christmas. If you spent any time on social media, maybe you got some end of year appeal letters. You may have seen the poem, "The Work of Christmas," from Howard Thurman. It gets posted a lot this time of year. I'm going to read it to you. And if you saw the newsletter that came from Three Rivers, it was included in that newsletter. So, there's a copy somewhere in your inbox if you get that.
When the song of the angels is stilled
When the star in the sky is gone
When the kings and princes are home
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins.
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.
I really like this poem, and it's also true that it really irks me that we post it in our social media feeds at Christmas and then just keep scrolling on past. Or I do keep scrolling on past without lingering to ask, what is that work of Christmas? What does it mean to heal the broken and to bring peace among brothers?
And boy, was I irked at myself for posting it, or for sending it out in the newsletter to all of you. So, the last 36 hours, I've been hanging out with Howard Thurman, who is the person who wrote this. Born 40 days between the, before the turn of the 20th century, Howard Thurman grew up in a Jim Crow South and became the pastor, the mystic to the civil rights movement.
Howard Thurman traveled in the 1930s to India and met Gandhi and brought the message of disciplined nonviolence back to the Civil Rights movement, convinced Dr. King that he had to embrace civil rights, not just as a tactic, but as a lifestyle, and encouraged him to make his own trip to India to learn from Gandhi himself.
And in this book, Jesus and the Disinherited, Thurman makes the argument that Jesus was born as one with his back against the wall of empire: not a citizen, a Jew, a refugee in a colonized context, Jesus didn't want to be worshiped. He wanted to be followed. And Jesus's invitation was for all people to live into that inherent dignity and worth that jesus experienced getting the message that even as an immigrant, a non-citizen, a Jew, and a refugee, Jesus was beloved child of God and knew that and wanted everyone to experience that. And in that reconciling mission is the ongoing work of Christmas.
I'm just going to circle back up to the top of my little introduction, which is that if Quakers don't keep days, so this is the question I'm sitting with, if we don't keep days because Christmas might happen at any moment, and we want to do the work of Christmas, then is that work of Christmas our ongoing work? Are we always to be listening for how we might heal the broken, feed the hungry, find the lost, whether or not it's Christmas time?
Howard Thurman also said that it is the work of each of us to hear the sound of the genuine in ourselves. To find out how we are individually called to be authentically doing the work of God. So it's not my work to find the lost, heal the broken, feed the hungry, and release the prisoner. I'm just supposed to do my part.
What is my part? What is your part? Friends. So as we walk into this 365 day season of Christmas, my question is. What is our work? What is your work? How will you bear that light of Christ in the world?