Taking the Baby Home

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Advent III, Year A
December 15, 2019
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
“Excuse me, do you know how this works?”
 
I am in the bustling UVA hospital parking deck.  The young man is standing by his car holding a very large box.  On first glance, he looks exhausted.  His hair is sticking up on one side like he has been sleeping in a chair.  This is not particularly unusual in wandering around a hospital.  UVA is almost always crowded with patients and families - people who are anxious and mostly unenthused about being there.  But this guy was particularly bug-eyed, clearly concerned, and totally innocent looking.
 
It turns out that the big box is a brand-new infant car seat.  The baby has come early.  The dad was not prepared.  And he didn’t get the last birthing class where they covered car seats and other practical matters.  My experience with car seat installation is dated by 21 years, but I threw in, and did the very atypical thing, and read the directions.  After 10 minutes of tugging, buckling, and adjusting we got it in there, and looking like the diagram.  He was grateful.  And as we were going our separate ways, he said “I guess you are never really ready for a child in your life, are you?”  “Amen,” I said.  “You got that right.” And off he went to pick her up and bring her home.
 
And here we are readying ourselves for the birth of Jesus, but on this third Sunday of Advent, we have a strange flash forward.  In the passage we read from Matthew’s gospel, we have already had Jesus’ baptism and temptation, he has delivered the Sermon on the Mount, he has gone about healing, helping, and hanging out with sinners.  John the Baptist is wondering if Jesus is the real deal, the One, God made human.  He wonders this because Jesus does not do what he thought he would do.  No flash.  No thunder.  No might making right.  Unfortunately for John, he is in prison, and he is unable to see Jesus at work.  John was readying himself and the world for the Messiah.  John was not ready for that Messiah to take the shape of love in person.  And that begs the question for us.  Are we ever ready for the child to come into our life, not as rule maker, power broker, or holy enforcer, but in the pure vulnerability of love?  Are we ever really ready for that child in our life?
 
There is really funny You Tube circulating about the interwebs.  It features a woman sitting in her car, laughing hysterically, and telling a story on herself.  It seems she was killing time at a Wawa gas station before picking up her kids at school.  She had been reading an article about how people are particularly generous in this season, and she was inspired to do one of those random acts of kindness, paying for a ginger ale for the person in line in front of her.  Fresh off the experience of generosity, she comes out of the store and sees a man washing her car windshield.  She is so overcome, she rushes up to the man and gives him a huge hug and gushes about how much she loves humanity.  At that point she realizes that the car windshield he is washing is the same kind of car as hers, but it is not hers, and the man is completely clueless as to why this random stranger is doing this.  The whole of the video is just the woman telling her story and laughing through confessional embarrassment and the irony of it all.  It is just a video selfie, but what captures me is the unexpected joy that even misplaced love and gratitude creates.  We are all on a mysterious tour through life and love is so often surprising and unexpected.
 
And speaking of unexpected, there is another viral video to see that is an advertisement for a British hardware store.  It made news because it was made for less than 200 pounds, and it has had over two and a half million views outside of England.  It starts with a typical looking Christmasy home where a kid bounds out of bed in his cartoon pajamas and goes down to look at the tree.  Curiously then, makes his own breakfast, gets dressed, and walks down the sidewalk to Haford’s Hardware Store.  At this point, we are wondering where his parents are or where any adults are, but then he pulls out some keys, unlocks the door and turns the hanging sign from closed to open and puts on an apron.  The boy sets about dusting counters, stocking shelves, and even waits on customers.  With a smile and a thumbs up, he wraps a package in gift wrap (in his messy childlike way).  All the while, the background music is a sweet version of the song forever young.
 
Flash forward, he stacks up some toy stuffed animals and reads them a Christmas book.  He sweeps some floors, gives more thumbs up to customers and coworkers, runs the calculator through the accounts, decorates a tree in the window, and then daylight begins to fade to evening.  He climbs in a stool, flips out the lights, turns the sign from open to closed, and locks the door.  On the sidewalk there is an enormous tree all bundled up for delivery, and he leans down to pick it up.  There is no way he will be able to carry it, but when his face reemerges, he is, in fact, a grown man.  He gives the thumbs up and carries the tree down the street.  The only tag line reads: “Be a kid this Christmas.”  Even if we are not sentimental, we cannot help but get unexpectedly teary at the innocence and calling in that scene.
 
As we trudge through the Advent season, it can be so easy to pass this off as just another set of detailed tasks and obligations.  There are decorations, meal preps, shopping, cards, lots of tradition to observe.  There are family gatherings, bringing logistical planning and emotional baggage, not to mention memory of those we love by see no longer.  We are expected to be joyful even if we are not always there.
 
So today, we light a pink candle, as a reminder to lighten up.  After all, the promise we await of the love of Jesus.  That is not a burden.  It is an unearned, unmerited, and unexpected gift we are all given – not just in the hyped-up season, but for all time.  John the Baptist wonders out loud for us, is this the “one who is to come or are we to wait for another?”  Yes.  The Jesus of pure love is the One, no waiting, no wondering any more.
 
We may not be aware of, even ready for, this child - God in person - to show up unannounced, but the world is groaning in labor: eager, needy, ready to be delivered.  In parking garages, gas stations, and hardware stores, in our schools, work places, and unplanned encounters, the God of love is being born again and again and again.  Will it be how we expect?  Will it happen at a specific time and place of our choosing?  Do we know how it all works?  My, no.  But God does.  And God’s love is not only ON the way, God’s love is THE way - for all of us - to be brought home.  Amen.