December 28, 2003

First Sunday of Christmas

Col 3:12-17

Christmas Clothes

by the Rev. Dr. Leslie Kennard

When I first read the passage from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, I said to myself, “This is vintage Paul” because one of Paul’s favorite images is of “putting on” an aspect of faith as one “puts on” clothing. In 1 Thessalonians (5:8), he said, “Put on the breastplate of faith and love... and for a helmet, the hope of salvation.” Ephesians 6 (11): “...put on the whole armor of God...” and in 1 Corinthians (15:54), we “put on immortality” and in Romans (13:12) he tells us to “put on the armor of light.”

Paul is such a great orator. His faith shines through, pure and strong. And he knows human nature. When Paul says put on the breastplate of faith, put on the helmet of hope, put on the whole armor of God, and this morning put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, tenderness, and patience+when Paul says “put on” he talks to every human being across time and across cultures. Surely there was new clothing under most Christmas trees! Who among us doesn’t enjoy a new shirt or blouse, a new sweater or jacket, a new hat or scarf or tie, new wool socks for hiking or skiing, new mittens or driving gloves? I am most comfortable in jeans and a sweatshirt+and older is better--but a new pair of earrings or a new blouse does get my attention. Bill is at the other end of the spectrum. He loves new clothes. He’s a real clothes horse. When he was director of research, the faculty speculated that if there were an award for the best paper, the first prize would be a tour of Bill’s wardrobe.

So today, in keeping with Christmas spirit, Paul says, “put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience....” We are to gird ourselves as if for war with tender mercies, shield ourselves with kindness, wear humility on our feet like combat boots, cover our heads with a helmet of gentleness, and carry a shield of patience. Well. That’s not quite right.

If we look closely at the garments Paul would have us put on, we see that most of them are garments to protect us: put on the breastplate of faith and love, the helmet of hope for salvation (1 Thess. 5:8), “the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil” (Eph 6:11). To set aside our “deeds of darkness”, Paul urges us to “put on the armor of light” (Rom. 13:12).

But in today’s scripture, Paul does not liken the qualities of tender mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience to armor. Paul is not telling us to put on these traits to protect ourselves. Quite the opposite. In this morning’s scripture, Paul has something very different from moral battle in mind.

The first quality we are to put on is “tender mercies” - the word tender captured my attention. Tender. Tender is such a wonderful word. When I think of tender, I feel soft. I want to become totally quiet, to hold my breath. Tender - can you feel it?

Tender - that’s how we feel toward the newly born. (And Christmas is surely a “newborn season” if there is one!) I’ve never been much of a “baby” person myself. Babies are cute, but from a distance. I never got all mushy when someone arrived on the scene with a baby. I didn’t even get mushy about my own baby. Back in the old days, they put us to sleep for childbirth, and the babies all stayed in the nursery until they were ready to go home. So the day David and I were to go home from the hospital, the nurse came and got his outfit and she dressed him in the nursery while I dressed myself. Someone brought the wheelchair, and the nurse carried David while I was wheeled to the car. I got settled in the car, put my seatbelt on, and THEN, THEN she handed me my baby and I saw him for the first time. And I did not feel tender. I felt terrified. O-o-h-h-h, my God, how am I ever going to do right by this boy child? I had done a lot of baby-sitting in my teens so I knew how to change diapers and make formula and burp babies. But THIS baby in my arms was about a lot more than changing diapers and burping. I was paralyzed with the overwhelming responsibility.

I had several pregnancies after David was born, but each baby died. I began to feel as if babies were a bad deal. For decades, the only baby I ever felt and tenderness about was the baby Jesus, and if someone had asked me why I felt tender about the baby Jesus, I’d have said, “Because nobody’s going to hand him to me.” See, I didn’t think I was responsible for the baby Jesus.

Then last December, God decided it was time to change my attitude. Ali called to say her baby had been born, my first grandchild. Ali and the baby were healthy, and that was good, but even as Bill and I got in the car to head for the hospital, I was thinking, “Darn. This baby is going to be...a baby. And sooner or later, I’m going to have to ...hold her.” But I’ve always believed that as the parent I must do what needs to be done, so+to borrow an image from Paul+I girded my loins, and put on the countenance of a smile and walked into the hospital room. I held Ali, and talked with her, but the moment of truth finally arrived when Ali said, “You can hold her, Mom.” So I smiled again and said, “Oh, great!” and walked over to the warming table and leaned over and looked at this itsy bitsy teeny weenie preemie and took a huge breath and carefully, oh, so carefully picked her up and+suddenly and totally unexpectedly--I was overwhelmed with tenderness and mercy and joy and love. All at once. Time stopped. I felt tenderness that I’d never felt before.

Wow! The paternal grandfather felt the same way. And the feeling has lasted. On Thursday, he and I would catch each other watching this now one-year-old and we’d say it out loud: Wow! Rose, whose grandbaby was born the same day, feels it too: Wow! Wow!

Tender mercy. Kindness. Humility. Gentleness. Patience. And love. Incredible love. I felt these emotions all at once toward this baby. Only much later did I understand that all the pains I’d experienced with infants prepared me for this moment. It is SO hard to make sense out of the pain we experience in our lives. But now I realize that pain is what makes us tender. Think for a minute: how does something become tender? Meat is the first thing that comes to my mind - how do you tenderize meat? You pound it. You puncture it. You beat it with the back of a cleaver, breaking and tearing the tough fibers that hold it together. After all my losses, and after all these years of marinating in my sorrows, I am tender. And I understand the Christmas story.

God came to us as an infant, a new born baby, innocent and powerless and sweet, because God wants us to feel toward God the tender mercy, the compassion, the kindness, the gentleness, the patience, the love that God feels toward us. God had tried giving humans the Garden of Eden, giving us the Promised Land, giving us freedom from slavery in Egypt, giving us rules to live by so life would be more predictable, more secure, giving us prophets, giving us victory in war, and manna when we were hungry. God gave us EVERYTHING and humans STILL treated God as if God were a hobby, something we do when all the important work and play of life are done. Something we do for an hour on the Sabbath. God is out there, and life is in here.

Over and over and over again in the Bible we hear that the weak shall be strong, the last shall be first, the meek shall be blessed. We know that, but how rarely we live that way. But despite God’s infinite strength, God came to us as a baby knowing we’d be drawn in tenderness to take the newborn child into our hearts. We felt it on Christmas Eve, didn’t we? In the hush, in the beauty of the candlelight, in the holiness of the moment, didn’t we feel awe and wonder? We didn’t just sing, “O come, let us adore him.” For that moment, we truly adored God, the infant, coming to us. All these thousands of years, God has adored us. Now we have had a glimpse of what it feels like to adore God. God and humans drawn together in their mutual love for a newborn child.

That was Christmas Eve. If on Christmas Eve, we caught a glimpse of what it feels like to adore God, today, the fourth day of Christmas, the challenge that Paul extends to us is to reach out and accept God’s gift of Himself. To reach out and take the Baby into our hearts. To reach out and welcome that baby into our lives. To reach out and become filled with tender mercies, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

Paul wants us not to shield ourselves for battle, but to open ourselves up, that “the word of Christ may dwell in you richly” (Col. 3:17). (We recognize these words from the gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God...” (John 1:1). Paul wants us to open ourselves to letting God live within our hearts. )

What do you think? Can we, each of us alone and all of us together, can we accept this baby in a new way? Can we accept the baby Jesus into our hearts, and give Him a home for as long as we live? It’s not going to be easy - just as a baby’s care involves midnight feedings and teething woes, the care of God in our hearts will demand sacrifices. But those sacrifices won’t come all at once. They will come one at a time, and by the grace of God, we will be able to meet the challenges-- with tender mercies, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. And when we meet the challenges of living with other humans with compassion and gentleness, with patience and mercy, that’s how we adore God.

AMEN