SERMONS FROM TRINITY
Home
Preached by the Rev. Thomas M. Kryder-Reid on Christmas Eve 2013 at the
Christ Mass, Trinity Episcopal Church, Indianapolis. Lessons: Isaiah 9:2-4, 6-7;
Psalm 96:1-4, 11-12; Luke 2:1-14; John 1:1-14.
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aybe you know about Brandon Smith who lives at 632 Locust Grove Lane in
Greenwood. Note the address: 632 Locust Grove Lane. You may want to visit
there next year.
Brandon made the national news. He has eighty-six Christmas trees—eighty-six, in
his home. Free tours have been available since December 1st. Donations are encouraged,
for the benefit of Riley Children’s Hospital.
By the way, all the trees are artificial, which saves on needle sweeping, not to
mention deforestation. And as you enter this home, you find that it’s toasty warm. Yes,
all the heat generated by all the lights adorning all those trees—an estimated fifty-two
thousand bulbs—keeps the whole house at eighty-five degrees or warmer. So Brandon
actually shuts down his furnace during December. Although I’d guess, what he saves on
heat, he more than makes up for with light.
It’s certainly a place where the Christmas spirit glows.
But alas, to the best of my knowledge the free tours ended tonight, about an hour ago.
So let’s bring ourselves all the closer now to the light and warmth that glows in and from
this home that’s Trinity Church. And I’d like to start by focusing in on this word home,
which is at the heart of both gospel versions of the Christmas story we heard tonight.
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S
t. Luke’s is the first we heard. Luke reports that Mary wrapped newborn Jesus “in
bands of cloth, and… because there was no place for them in the inn… laid him in
a manger.”
You may wonder: What kind of home is a manger? And what would you find if you
entered one? Popular imagination projects onto this Christmas manger scene a holy
family too poor to afford lodging, a heartless innkeeper who turns them away, and a
crude animal shelter as their only recourse.
Notice in the story itself, though—none of those descriptions appears. Nowhere does
Luke describe Joseph and Mary as poor, or the manger as a crude animal shelter, or an
innkeeper who’s heartless. In fact, Luke never mentions animals or an innkeeper. And
neither, for that matter, do Matthew or John, the other gospel writers who tell the
Christmas story.
Truth be told, all the familiar references in sermons you hear, carols you sing, stories
you read, and artwork you see that depict a poor, outcast holy family consigned to a crude
animal shelter—they have no basis in scripture. Most of them stem from the thirteenthcentury, from much-beloved St. Francis of Assisi, who committed himself to a life of
poverty as his path to God. It was St. Francis who, at midnight mass in the year 1223,
began the tradition of praying before a humble Christmas crèche. And yes, many
churches continue that tradition, as do we tonight.
But what is Luke actually intending to show us in the manger scene?
One of the more plausible suggestions [from Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, Image 1977, pp.
418-420] is that he’s hearkening back to the prophet Isaiah’s protest against Israel’s and
humanity’s self-centeredness and rebelliousness. Isaiah quotes God as grumbling, “The
ox knows its owner, and the donkey its manger”—note that word manger—“but Israel
does not know, my people do not understand” [Isa. 1:3]. Luke then pointedly portrays Jesus
as born in a manger to affirm that the breach separating God and humanity is bridged.
His point is that God takes the healing initiative by coming among us in person,
vulnerable as a baby.
And so now, just as any dumb ox knows its owner and any dense donkey understands
where to find its manger, Israel can know, any of us can understand, just how much God
loves and cares for all of us—everybody.
From that perspective, you see, the manger appears as anything but recourse for the
rejected. Rather, it is God’s welcome for the restored. The inn—that’s for travelers, for
transients; it’s no place for God. The manger is where God comes among us in person
and meets us as we are.
All of which is why Luke explicitly calls this Christmas manger scene a “sign for
you.” It’s a sign for you and me and everybody that God came home to us so that we can
now come home to God.
Notice too: The same meaning comes through in the other gospel version of the
Christmas story we heard tonight. St. John’s gospel celebrates that the “Word of God”
active “in the beginning,” in creation, “became flesh and lived among us” in Jesus. And
that phrase “lived among us”—it means, literally, made a dwelling among us: as in
pitched a tent, set up a tabernacle, built a home among us. [Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according to
John, The Anchor Bible vol. 29, Doubleday 1966, pp. 30-35]
And so, here we are back again at the manger, an image glowing with light and
warmth. And not merely artificial, as in eighty-six Christmas trees adorned with fifty-two
thousand bulbs. But divine light and warmth—of God, who made all creation and then
came home to us so that we can now come home to God.
How, then, can we come home to God?
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W
ell, our friend Brandon Smith at 632 Locust Grove Lane in Greenwood offers
a clue.
His home, glowing as it does—it’s a draw. People flock there. All those
trees, the lights, the free tours, the donations—Brandon’s home has been open every
December for more than a decade now. Some years he estimates more than a thousand
people tour through. And they’re not just family and friends, the favored and familiar;
they’re all sorts and conditions. “We’ve had a few who’ve said they’re Grinches,” he
acknowledges, “but when they leave, they’re grinning from ear to ear.”
Plus, guess where many of Brandon’s trees come from year after year.
People give them—year round. He told a reporter, “It’s not uncommon for us to come
home in the middle of July and find a Christmas tree on the front porch.”
2 What happens every December at Brandon’s home is spectacular. But at the heart of
it, the process is simple, even humble: Light the place up, warm the place up, open the
place up, and invite people in. And they come. And they give.
And in their giving, they add to the light and the warmth and the openness.
It’s a simple, humble process—lighten up, warm up, open up, invite—and it outlines
how you and I can at least begin to find our way home to God.
There are so many examples of people who know and show how we can come home
to God. Thirteenth-century St. Francis: He brought light and warmth and openness to all
God’s creatures, great and small, rich and poor. Twenty-first-century Pope Francis: He’s
bringing light and warmth and openness to all God’s people—maybe even, God bless
him, to the doctrine-bound. And both Francises are beloved especially for opening their
hearts to the poor.
So yes, there’s truth in the crèche scene as well as the manger scene. Christmas
should be our reminder that the humble can outshine the spectacular.
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A
nd so in that Christmas spirit, I’ll leave you to reflect on the most dazzling
example I’ve come across so far this Christmas of how any of us can lighten up,
warm up, open up, and invite.
Willie Davis and Yalitza Castro live in Charlotte, North Carolina. Willie used to be
homeless. Yalitza still is, in a way, as an undocumented immigrant. They shared their
version of the Christmas story in a conversation broadcast just this past Friday on NPR’s
“StoryCorps” [12/20/13]. Here’s the gist of it:
Yalitza begins by telling Willie how it was that she began cooking dinner every other
Saturday night for homeless men and women. One cold, rainy night, she was in the car
with her kids when they noticed “a guy with a sign asking for some help.” Yalitza gave
him five dollars and drove on. But then her daughter asked, “Mommy, why don’t we take
him to dinner?” So they did a u-turn, only to find that the man was no longer there. That
was when Yalitza decided, “We have to do something.”
Willie then shares with Yalitza his recollection of the first dinner, which was
Christmas 2010. The church bus picked up him and some others at the men’s shelter. And
he was hesitant, wondering why this “this lady” would come to such a rough part of town
to do this dinner; but when they arrived, he decided to go in.
WILLIE tells Yalitza: I smelled the cooking and… I saw a smile on your face and it
made everybody feel welcome… You know, I [hadn’t] had that kind of feeling in a
long time…
YALITZA: That night… you guys, all together, started singing the “Feliz Navidad”
song. And I said, O my gosh… and I start crying.
WILLIE: Everybody just gave you a standing ovation, pretty much. It’s just—you
don’t make us feel homeless. You know us by names and faces. And we know
you…care. Before I met you… I pretty much almost gave up. But that homecooked meal… brought my self-esteem back... And now I got my own place and…
3 YALITZA: …And that gives me motivation because I’m here in the United states
by myself with my kids and I know that it’s hard. That Christmas dinner, it’s not
just a meal. It’s try to make you guys feel like we are family.
WILLIE: Every other Saturday feels like Christmas to me. That’s why I keep
coming. I’m always gonna keep coming.
TRINITY EPISCOPAL CHURCH
3243 NORTH MERIDIAN STREET
INDIANAPOLIS, IN 46208
317-926-1346
© 2013 Thomas M. Kryder-Reid
www.TrinityChurchIndy.org
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