A homily by the Reverend Diane Teichert
Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist Church
Christmas Eve 9:30 Service 2010
“Each night a child is born is a holy night.” Even the night you were born.
Yes, it was a holy night, that night that you came into the world.
Hear what I say: Whether you were conceived in love. Whether anyone other than your mom attended your birth. Whether any stars at all could be seen that night, never mind one so brilliant people could follow it for miles to your birthplace.
No matter the circumstances, the night of the day you were born was a holy night. Whatever inequalities of love and status ensue after birth, at birth we were all lovable. And we still are, deep inside, lovable. All of us.
Whatever ills we have suffered, whomever we have hurt, however lonely or scared we may be, each and every one of us is lovable.
If there is a specifically Unitarian Universalist message in the Christmas story, perhaps it is that. That each and every person is inherently lovable, and all births deserve to be heralded. This year, I’m drawn to the baby at the center of the story.
I find irresistible that Christmas reading by the revered 20th century Unitarian religious educator, Sophia Lyon Fahs, set to haunting music in our Singing the Journey songbook and sung so beautifully by our choir tonight. In the song, the parents ask, “Where and how will this new life end, or will it ever end?” but we are as likely to ask, “Who is this little one? What name shall be given? How will he or she live this life?”
We read from the Gospel of Luke tonight, but had we read the story from the Gospel of Matthew, we would have heard the angel tell Joseph to name his baby Jesus, which means savior.
I’m reminded of a more recent story shared by Don and Carolyn Mosley, who lived at Koinonia Farm in Georgia when they helped launch Habitat for Humanity and then started a refugee resettlement program also in Georgia, Jubilee Partners. I saved their 2001 Christmas newsletter because of this story.
Late that fall, they were in a jumbo airplane on the homestretch of a trip to the Middle East where they had visited Habitat for Humanity programs in Egypt and Jordan. The pilot spoke over the plane’s PA system, “Is there a doctor or nurse aboard this plane?”
The Royal Jordanian flight was already well out over the darkness of the North Atlantic, and the pilot’s sudden question got every passenger’s full attention at once. It was only weeks after September 11th and everyone was skittish anyway.
Two professional-looking Arab men got up from their seats…and made their way toward the cockpit. All over the big airliner nervous glances followed them as they went forward. A minute later, they hurried without a word to the back of the crowded plane.
“What’s happening?” hundreds of people whispered to each other, mostly in Arabic.
Hours of intensive security procedures at the airports on top of weeks of tragic news from New York, Washington, and Afghanistan had caused every passenger to wonder– at least briefly–if perhaps this was not the best time to be flying from the Middle East to Chicago.
For the next three hours, as the plane flew through the darkness there was no clue given about what was going on. Then, just about the time the plane reached Newfoundland, the pilot made another announcement—first in Arabic and then in English.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are pleased to announce that we have a new passenger aboard, born just a few minutes ago. He is a little boy, and his name is Hani!” There was a roar of applause and happy laughter. Somehow it was just the kind of news that they all needed. A new baby.
Herald that baby!
The name Hani, I looked it up – it means “full of joy.” “Where and how will this new life end, or will it ever end? Who is this little one, Hani? How will he or she live this life?”
The newsletter article went on to describe the homes the Mosley’s had visited along the Nile River in Egypt, homes in which babies are born and people live their lives as best they can. They reported practically crawling through some dark little mud brick houses crowded with people, animals and flies, where people who had recently applied to the Habitat program lived. They also visited dozens of clean, new houses with indoor plumbing, strong roofs, colorful walls, and floors made of concrete instead of dirt. These houses had been transformed by community effort and no-profit, no-interest loans of less than $1,000 each.
“Consider the peacemaking effect of providing funds to build 1,000 new homes along the Nile River,” they wrote. “At approximately the same cost as one cruise missile! Once that cruise missile is deployed, it is absolutely destroyed, along with the people and objects it struck. It has finished doing whatever it was going to do—except that every such missile deepens the pool of suffering and anger and then helps to recruit a few more young men into the ranks of those determined somehow to strike back.
On the other hand, when the 1,000 Habitat loans are paid off the money is used immediately to build another 1,000 houses, and then another 1,000 after that, potentially indefinitely. Suffering is reduced and peace is promoted on a grand scale. And also on a small scale, when Egypt Muslim and Christian families work together on each others’ Habitat homes.
The Mosleys conclude by asking, Do we really think Jesus would have hesitated at all before choosing between such courses of action? We think he might even have buckled on his nail belt and helped with the construction. After all, as the story goes, the baby Jesus grew up to be a carpenter.”
I wonder who the little baby named Hani, now nine, will grow up to be? And the babies to be born this year in our congregation, in our families and in our neighborhoods? How will they be heralded? What will they be named? Who will they become?
Will they be builders of missiles and pilots of destruction, or will they be builders of houses and justice? Will they be peacemakers in the small ways of ordinary people? Or public leaders saving their communities and nations from cycles of violence?
Indeed, there is still that of the small, lovable child in each of us – who will each of us become? It’s never too late to become “full of joy.”
Herald that birth.