"The Blessed Interruption of Christmas"

Luke 2:1-10

Christmas Eve, December 24, 2011

Reverend Dr. David C. Brown
Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ
400 Glenwood Drive, Chattanooga, TN 37404

Do you like to be interrupted when you’re busy? I don’t. Like most pastors I am busy enough to want my life planned and organized. Interruptions disrupt what I had expected to accomplish.

I say that as a form of confession because over the years of my ministry, many of the most meaningful moments I have known as a pastor came as the result of interruptions. I have come to believe that interruptions are an important way God has of breaking in to our lives. The word interruption means, literally, “something that breaks in between.” We may experience interruptions as breaking up our routines, when it may be that God is trying to break in to our lives. This has happened to people all through history and nowhere is this more clear than what happened at the first Christmas. Look at the ways the characters responded to this blessed Christmas interruption.

Mary’s plans to marry are interrupted by an angel who tells her that she will give birth to the Son of the Most High, even though she is little more than a child herself. How does she respond to this interruption of her plans? She agrees to accept this awesome and life-changing interruption and then sings a song of praise to God.

When Joseph learned what happened he feels humiliated, but being a good man he resolved to put Mary in some private place to spare both her feelings and even, perhaps, her life. But when God challenges Joseph to accept this divine interruption and accept the responsibility of being the provider and protector of Mary and the child, he does so without a word of complaint.

When we stop to think about it, the birth the angels proclaim to Mary and Joseph and the Shepherds and ultimately to us is itself an interruption. Instead of coming in majesty and power, God comes to us as a little child, born in a forgotten part of the world. In other words, God comes into human life the same way we did, as little babies, weak and helpless. God comes as close to human life as breath and bone and muscle. When we recognize that we can never look at our own lives or the lives of other people in the same way again. Emmanuel. God is with us. How could we treat God in our lives or in other lives with anything other than compassion and love? That is the only way we can worship and serve God.

What an incredible story. It is certainly not a story we would have come up with ourselves. We wouldn’t have planned things this way. The first Christmas was an interruption. For that matter, Christmas is always an interruption. But in this most wonderful moment in the year, we have the chance to put our plans aside long enough to greet this interruption as welcome. After all, it could be God trying to break into your life and mine.

How does the old hymn put it? “Where meek souls will receive him, still The Dear Christ enters in.” Amen.