Sermon

Dec. 24, 2005

A Sermon Preached on Christmas Eve 2005, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

A crazy thing happened up in Canada in 1965. The warden of one of Canada ’s most isolated National parks was around to see it. As a passenger train sped through the Rocky Mountains on Christmas Eve, suddenly the engineer applied the brakes and the train screeched to a halt. Passengers crowded to the windows to see what was holding up the train. There standing in about four feet of snow was Santa Claus with a big sack of toys slung over his shoulder and an elf helper in a green hat. The passengers alighted into the snow, took pictures, asked questions, and shook Santa’s hand.

The explanation for this irrational event is also irrational. Seems back in those days, two employees of the Canadian Pacific Railroad were housed up there in the Rockies and every year distributed Christmas gifts to the needy children of the area, many of whom lived, almost forgotten out in isolated cabins. Each year one of the two put on a full Santa suit and the other dressed as a helper elf, just to brighten the lives of the kids. This year, their route over the dirt roads took them next to the train tracks just as the train went by, so they stood at the edge of the tracks in full uniform, to wave at the passengers. It was the engineer who did the craziest thing. He stopped. Stopping made the train late. It may have inconvenienced some of the passengers. Surely they would not have remembered being on time, but they all remembered the magical moment in which they met Santa and his helper beside the railroad tracks out in the wilderness.

This Christmas, let us celebrate the irrational. Our festival begins and ends in a kind of craziness. Madeline L’Engle wrote of it: “This is the irrational season/ When love blooms bright and wild/ Had Mary been filled with reason,/There had been no room for the child!” What possesses us to engage in feats of generosity and to deck our houses with trees and branches and silly tokens? What possesses us to give gifts to the poor and to make room for cranky relatives and neighbors? Surely at this time of year we stretch ourselves beyond the limits of the rational mind. But our madness is divine.

For tonight we read a message of peace and goodwill that was directed, not at people of wealth and power, but was spoken specifically to the poorest of the poor, shepherds in the field, about a homeless baby. Tonight we celebrate the birth of one who told us to love our enemies and to do good to them. Tonight we remember a birth that was heralded by the unlikely presence of a star and the song of angels.

It takes divine madness to challenge the powerful on their thrones and to stand with the poor and oppressed. But we do it when we give our wealth to those in need—as so many of you have done. It takes divine madness to love, not hate and attack our enemies—as so many of you have done as you have reached out in love and charity to those who are different. It takes divine madness to follow a star and to listen to angels and to embrace just a little more warmly those who are hard to love—as so many of you have done tonight.

Mary was divinely mad to bear the child. The shepherds were divinely mad to heed the message of the angels. The Magi were divinely mad to follow a star across a continent. And we are divinely mad to take the child into our hearts; mad to embrace the poor; mad to love in such costly ways. But, let us have it no other way. May we impersonate Santa for the poor; may we stop trains and interrupt schedules; may we love one another as we have never loved before. For this is the irrational season. And perhaps, God willing, we never will return to our senses. AMEN