A Service by Rev. John Parker Manwell
Liturgy
RINGING OF THE BELLS
WELCOME AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
Lynn Jacobs, Trustee
PRELUDE
“I Saw Three Ships” -- Lizzy Moss
OPENING WORDS
For our opening words I’d like to share with you some words that a few of you may even remember. They were written by UCN’s much loved minister of more than fifty years ago, Jim Curtis:
I wish for you, all around you,
People who love easily and forgive quickly;
Whose eyes are stars when you are night;
Whose voices are trumpets when you are silence;
I wish for you
People about you who are gifts in themselves,
And whose presence in your life
Is an all-year-round present.
LIGHTING OF THE CHALICE
In the light of truth and in the warmth of love,
We gather to seek, to sustain, and to share
LIGHTING OF SPECIAL CANDLE
We also have another candle to light this morning, a very special candle of joy in honor of the Senate’s historic vote yesterday to repeal our nation’s infamous law barring gays and lesbians from serving openly in the armed forces. May its light burn brightly in our hearts, reminding us that all of us, whatever our sexuality, are members of the great human family.
HYMN #231: Angels We Have Heard on High
STORY FOR ALL AGES: The Christmas Sleds -- Rev. Manwell
By Aney B. Chatterton, in Jamie C. Miller et al., ibid. pp. 159-64
The year was 1932 and the nation’s economy was at an all-time low. . . . I was in the eighth grade, and we all started school that fall with few clothes and school supplies. There was no lunch program, and for many students there was no food to bring. So those of us who could bring something to eat shared whatever we had.
I remember that whenever any of us had an extra penny, we would put it in an envelope and hide it. When we had twenty pennies saved, we would take them to the store and buy two cans of Vienna sausages . . . . Then we would . . . put all our lunches together, open the cans of sausage, and divide everything equally. Those were special days.
As Christmas approached that year . . . [w]e knew there would be very little for any of us. But there was one desire we all had, though none of us would have mentioned it to our parents. A new sled had appeared on the market called the Flexible Flyer. With its sleek finish, sharp runners, and smooth handlebars that steered it easily and gracefully, it was the Rolls-Royce of all sleds.
We all marched to the hardware store one day after school to see the new wonder sled. “How much are the sleighs, Mr. Evans?” one of the boys asked.
“Well,” he replied, “I think I can sell them for four dollars and ninety-eight cents.” Our hearts sank. But that didn’t stop us from dreaming the impossible dream. . . .
I awoke early Christmas morning but was not eager to get up. My mother finally called, so I dressed and we all went to the living room. . . . There, underneath the tree, with a big red ribbon tied around it, was a shiny new sled – a Flexible Flyer!
I let out a startled cry and dropped to the floor, sliding my fingers along the satiny finish, moving the handlebars back and forth, and finally cradling the precious sled in my arms. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I looked up at my parents and asked, “Where did you get the money for it?”
My mother wiped away a tear with the corner of her apron and replied, “Surely you believe in Santa Claus. . . .”
After our midday Christmas dinner, Mother announced, “Put on your boots and bundle up warm. We’re going to town. We have another surprise for you.” I didn’t think anything could compare with the surprise I already had.
Dad hitched up the team to our big sleigh, I loaded in my new sled, and we went to town. As soon as we crossed the bridge, I saw what the surprise was. Kids were everywhere, and so were Flexible Flyers. Main Street had been roped off so that we could start at the top of the hill and glide all the way down across the bridge without danger from cars. The entire community had turned out. Boys and girls were all jumping up and down, some were crying, most were throwing their arms around each other and shouting, “You got one, too?”
. . . Three farmers with their horses and sleighs . . . [took] turns pulling us to the top of the hill. The older boys went first, running and then flopping “belly first,” as we called it, onto their sleds. . . . We all took turns . . . .
As night drew near, our parents called for us to stop – it was time to return home for chores. “No, no,” we cried. “Please let us stay.” Reluctantly they agreed, releasing us from chores for this one time only. When they returned it was dark, but the moon shone brightly, lighting the hill. The cold wind blew over our bodies; the stars seemed so brilliant and close, the hill dark and shadowy as we made our last run for the day. Cold and hungry, but happy, we loaded our Flexible Flyers and returned home with memories that would last a lifetime.
Everywhere I went in the days that followed, my Flexible flyer went with me. One night I decided to go to the barn, as I often did, just to watch Dad at work. I noticed that one of the stalls was empty. “Where’s Rosie?” I asked. “She isn’t in her stall.”
There was an awkward silence, and my dad finally replied, “We had to sell her. She cut her foot on the fence.”
Sell Rosie? I thought. Gentle, friendly Rosie?
“But the cut would have healed,” I said, “Why didn’t you sell Meanie? She never does anything we want, but Rosie always leads the herd into the barn.”
Dad didn’t say anything, and suddenly I knew. Rosie had been sold to buy my Flexible Flyer. She was the best and would bring more money; and my parents had given the best they had – for me. . . . I ran from the barn in tears and hid myself behind the haystack.
. . . [T]he next day [I] told my best friend about Rosie. “Yes, I know,” she said. “My dad took ten bushels of apples from our cellar and took them to Pocatello and sold them door to door. He’s never had to do that before. That’s how I got my Flexible Flyer.”
. . . Little by little we began to put the pieces together. Everyone had a similar story to tell. Then we began to realize how the entire community had united in one monumental effort of sharing, trading, peddling, extra working, and, most of all, caring, to buy the Flexible Flyers. None of us ever had the slightest hint of what was going on right under our noses. This had to be the best-kept secret of all time in so small a community. . . .
Many years later . . . I asked my mother how they had managed to keep that secret, and who started it. Her eyes twinkled. She gave me one of those warm, loving smiles that only a mother can give and replied, “My dear daughter, you must never stop believing in Santa Claus.”
SONG OF DEPARTURE #403: Go Now in Peace
Children leave for Sunday School classes
A TIME OF MEDITATION
The Book of Life
Joys and Sorrows
Song #242 In the Lonely Midnight
OFFERTORY
The Christmas Song -- Torme and Wells
READING: “Christmas Echo”
I want to tell you a story. It’s based on one told by a man named Les Thomas.11 I call it the “Christmas Echo.” Is it true? Who knows? All I know is that though it may never have happened, it’s about a miracle that can happen to you or to me, any day of our lives – but especially at Christmas.
It’s about a man named Brubaker, and a boy named Billy. And also a small town pharmacist named Sam Smith. They lived in a small town, we’re not told where – except that not far off was a big hill that dominated the skyline – and that it was far enough south that it had not had a white Christmas for years and years. But tonight, it was Christmas Eve. And the weatherman was calling for snow.
Brubaker was 72. He was alone in his house. His eye caught the pictures on the piano. His wife, Emily. His daughter, Julie, then six. Both now long dead.
Now this Christmas Eve as it grew later, and the snow began to fall, he began to cough again, and remembered that he was almost out of medicine. He looked at his clock – it was almost nine. He dialed Smith’s Pharmacy, hoping it might still be open. Sam Smith answered. No, it wasn’t too late. He could refill the prescription. After he’d done so, he called Billy, who was out sweeping the snow off the sidewalk. Billy made deliveries for him around the town, on his bicycle. Billy was 17. He was pretty good in science, and had a scholarship to study science in college the next Fall. He played the trumpet, and often played with his friends at dances. Loved the big band sound. But he knew you couldn’t earn a living that way anymore. So he was going to study pharmacy. Who knows? Maybe he could take over Sam Smith’s pharmacy. Sam said he was the best helper he’d ever had. And Sam was old now, and long past retirement age.
“Looks like you’ll have to make one last delivery,” Sam said, looking up. Sam was filling a small brown bottle with a syrupy mixture. “I want you to take this over to Ed Brubaker on Oak Street. It’s the old brick house on the corner across from the depot.” Sam twisted the cap on the bottle. . . .
“Now there was a musician,” Sam said, shaking his head. . . . “Old Ed Brubaker when he was a young man could play with the best of them. Why there was talk he even had an offer to go to New York with one of the big bands. . . . Music was Ed’s whole life. You never saw a happier fellow. He even got the high school band to sounding like a big orchestra. . . . Ed saw to it there was always music. Easter. The Fourth of July. . . all the holidays, Ed always had the band right there. But the best of it, the very best, was always Christmas Eve. That was special. They’d all pile in those old cars and go up to the mountain. Everybody in town used to wait up to hear it. Just before midnight, Ed would raise up that trumpet and then he’d start to play, real low at first, so low you thought you were dreaming it, and then it’d get louder. Lord, it was music so sweet you’d have bet it was Gabriel himself calling you.
“And then they’d fire off that old cannon from the school, right at the stroke of midnight. And that was how it happened. Let’s see, it was Christmas 1933, no, 1934. Terrible thing. Maybe it was the cold and the snow that caused it. They never did know. That cannon just blew up in their faces. Ed was the only one who wasn’t hurt. The explosion killed three people. One was a girl from the high school. The others were Ed’s wife and his little daughter. It was a terrible thing to happen. Just terrible. Afterward, Ed barely said a word again to anybody, even after all these years. And he never played music again.
Sam handed the prescription to Billy, and Billy went back outdoors and climbed on his bike. When he got to Brubaker’s house on Oak Street, he rang the bell. Brubaker answered, and took the prescription from Billy. As Brubaker reached in his pocket to pay for it, Billy caught a glimpse of something silver in Brubaker’s hand. He was puzzled – it looked for sure like a trumpet mouthpiece. Billy wanted to ask about it, but couldn’t find the words. Brubaker counted out the change, then gave Billy an extra five-dollar bill. “It’s for you,” he said. “Merry Christmas.” Then the door closed. Billy rode his bike around the streets of the town for quite a long time, thinking, before he headed for home.
After he took his medicine, Brubaker went to the closet and got out his heavy winter coat. He unlocked the back door, turned on the porch light, and sat down on the garden bench, as the snow eased off and the stars began to break through the clouds. For a long time he sat there, the moon glancing off the silver trumpet in his lap, as he brooded on Christmases past, and on those that might have been. A couple of hours passed.
And then he heard it.
It was very faint at first, so soft Brubaker thought he might be dreaming, but then he knew he wasn’t. The notes were clear and mellow, ringing like wisps of wind, coming unmistakably from the mountain. With each bar of the Christmas carol, the trumpet’s call seemed to grow, like a choir adding voices. . . . Brubaker felt his emotions welling with each note, till the tears finally flooded his cheeks. Then, like a man in a dream, he picked up the trumpet and, lifting it to his lips, began to play an echo to the mountain serenade, a salute to the unseen musician. Together, the two voices in harmony soared over the notes, calling each to the other’s call and showering the silent city with a serenade.
After a long while at the top of the mountain, Billy could still hear the echo pounding in his ears when he reached down and closed the snaps of his trumpet case.
The snow had ended. The sky was clear. Christmas had come again.
ANTHEM: “O Holy Night” -- Laura Moss
SERMON: The Song of the Angels -- Rev. John Parker Manwell
By definition it comes when it’s darkest, when we least expect it. Something happens. Something breaks into our lives, and now the world looks different to us. Some call it God. Some call it grace. I call it the miracle of hope.
The ancients talked about “thin places” in our lives – times and places where the world of the spiritual seemed the closest to our daily lives, the most accessible. Holy places, like sacred temples, mountaintops and deserts. Holy times – like Christmas and Easter, and Passover; or special times of fasting, prayer and retreat.
You’ve heard me speak of that shelf-full of Christmas stories that I turn to each December, to prepare me for the holiday season. It’s the ones that tug shamelessly at my heartstrings that I like best. I call them stories of Christmas miracles.
Not stories of walking on water, or raising the dead. But stories of opening hearts locked tightly closed. Stories of the sacrifices our parents, or even strangers, have made for us, out of sheer caring.
Yes, Christmas celebrates the birth of the infant Jesus. But no one even knows when he was born, or where. The Christmas story is not just about the birth of Jesus. It’s about the potential of every child, every night a child is born. And beyond that it’s really about you and me, grown-ups that most of us think we are, about the birth of something new in us. It’s about the miracle of new hope and possibility that can come to any one of us, at any time – but in these stories it comes at Christmas which in our era is surely one of the “thinnest” times we know.
Sometimes it comes upon a midnight clear, like a song of the angels, echoing across the sky – as it happened to old Ed Brubaker. Sometimes it happens as an unexpected gift from a caring stranger, as it happened in a story I shared with you earlier this month, to sixteen-year old girl as she rode home tired and cold, on a Chicago city bus, filled with the sadness that her father’s abandonment had brought to her family at this now empty Christmas season. And sometimes it happens as our parents, or grandparents, or others we love, at great effort manage to find just the right gift for us, as children – perhaps a Flexible Flyer sled, perhaps a longed-for doll.
In the story we shared last Christmas Eve, these two themes combine. Maybe you remember how a grandfather, embittered and unable to celebrate Christmas since his mother had died at Christmas when he was a young boy, somehow found a way past his grief and bitterness years later as his grandson, now the same age, pleaded for a Christmas tree.
It’s also, of course, the theme of that long-time favorite story, Dickens’ Christmas Carol. I’m sure that many of you, like Phyllis and me, went down to the Wells this month to see our own Jack Whitelaw play the part of Tiny Tim in this year’s production by the Virginia Stage Company. If you haven’t gone yet, I can tell you that Jack, and the whole company, were wonderful. I haven’t reread the story since I first read it as a boy, but there hasn’t been a Christmas since then that I haven’t thought of it, and for years I would hear it read aloud on the radio.
Are these stories soupy and tear-jerking? Yes. Fanciful? No. Miracles happen. We long for them to happen at Christmas. And they don’t just happen to us, though very often at this dark time of year, in these dark times, we need them. They can happen because of us. We make them happen when we do something special out of our love for the children in our lives – or for our parents or our partners. We can make them happen when we sacrifice for each other, as adults, as in O. Henry’s much-loved “Gift of the Magi.” We can make them happen when we make a special effort to reach out to the passing stranger, even the far away stranger as we reach out through some organization that’s dear to our hearts.
As we count down the days this week until Christmas, I pray that none of us will allow the press of the season, and our exhaustion, to cause us to say or think, “Bah, humbug!” Instead, in all our busy-ness as we go about our holiday preparations and errands, may we nonetheless open our ears and our eyes and our hearts to those around us. In our homes and among our friends, even on a city bus or in the crowded malls, may we hear that distant song of the angels. May we bring the song of the angels to those around us.
Whether the angels herald for us the birth of Jesus, or the birth of love, may we tell it on the mountain, over the hills and far and wide, that hope is reborn in our hearts at this season of miracles, amidst the drab gloom of the earth and so often our spirits at this darkest season of the year.
CLOSING HYMN #239: Go Tell It on the Mountain
OFFERING
BENEDICTION
A. Powell Davies wrote:
Let us open our hearts to Christmas. Open them to all the hope that stands against a world that wastes with evil things; open them wide enough for gentleness in a world that is bitter and harsh; for loveliness in a world that is desolate; for faith and its joy, and the song of its joy, that sings in the presence of God.
POSTLUDE: Hallelujah Chorus (Handel)