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WHEN CHRISTMAS BREAKS YOUR HEART

Luke 2:22-35

Blue Christmas Service - December 20, 2006

In many churches throughout the world, people will gather this week for “Blue Christmas” services – services of healing, remembrance and hope. One group that sponsors a Blue Christmas Service in Texas is called “Compassionate Friends.” They are a network of families who have experienced a death of a child. Throughout the year they meet together to hear each other, support each other, encourage each other. And at Christmas, “Compassionate Friends” gather in the sanctuary to light candles in memory of those children, to show their photos and to read letters and poetry that articulate their feelings.

This poem was written last year by a grieving mother. It is called “A Christmas Wish.”

I’ll miss you at Christmas

When laughter’s everywhere

When church bells chime in merry rhyme,

And frost is in the air.

I’ll think of you at Christmas

Of when you were with me,

Of simple joys and silly toys

And days that use to be.

I’ll miss you at Christmas,

When children’s faces glow

And gaze in childish wonderment

At lights and mistletoe.

I’ll wish a Christmas miracle

Could bring you back to me,

And we would be together

For one more Christmas day.

That mother speaks a profound truth to us tonight – namely, that our sorrows and sense of loss seem to intensify at Christmas. Our loneliness is more pronounced and our grief is more grievous when we come within sight of Bethlehem.

What do you do when Christmas breaks your heart? How do you deal with grief when there should be joy? During the holiday season, a broken heart seems strangely, painfully, out of place.

Maybe that’s why so many people find the first Christmas after a death or a divorce or loss of health especially hard. What do Christmas pageants mean if you have no one to watch them with? What does all the shopping and decorating and baking mean when your loved one is no longer here to enjoy your efforts?

Maybe you’re here tonight, because your feelings don’t match the “merry” of Christmas. In spite of the prophet’s declaration that, “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light,” you may be experiencing a darkness that seems more real than the light. And despite the angel’s announcement, “His name shall be called Emmanuel – ‘God with us’ you may be more keenly sensing God’s absence than His presence right now.

What do you do when Christmas breaks your heart?

Perhaps it helps to know that your broken heart is no stranger to the Christmas story. Fear and danger, death and despair are not foreign in Bethlehem – they are part of the life that Emmanuel came to share with us. In fact, the Bible goes so far as to say that a broken heart stands at the center of Christmas. Not a stable, not a manger, not an angel or a star, but a broken heart.

That is what this last story of Christmas tells us – this story of Simeon.

(Read Luke 2:22-35)

I sometimes think of Simeon as the fourth Wise Man of Christmas. The gospel of Matthew tells of the first Wise Men with their gold, frankincense, and myrrh; but Luke presents Simeon as the other Wise Man. Obedient to God, filled with the Spirit, driven by a vision of what is yet to be. For years Simeon has asked God to let him live long enough to see the hope of God’s salvation for all people.

Then one day, the old man is in the Temple. He sees Mary and Joseph making the offering required of new parents. He walks over and takes baby Jesus in his arms. And this child is like a lens through which Simeon sees what good plans God has in store for the world. Life comes together for Simeon...and he understands...and he praises God. “Lord, let your servant depart in peace…for my eyes have seen your salvation.” God, I can die in peace now, because I’ve seen the One for whom life is worth living.

Simeon is the fourth Wise Man of Christmas – he is the fourth Magi to lay his gift before the Christ Child. But it is a strange gift indeed: not gold, but a sword – not frankincense in a bottle but a dagger to the heart. Simeon turns to Mary and says, "This child is destined for the rise and fall of many...AND A SWORD will pierce your own soul too."

Does that sound strange to you? Talk about a “mixed blessing!” But his words ARE a blessing for us tonight, for they remind us that Christmas can be just as much about grieving as about blessing or praising. Wise man Simeon, is God’s reality check at the manger – he’s there to remind us that Christmas neither denies nor devalues our losses.

Christmas is not God’s blind unawareness of our hurts and fears. Christmas is not a cosmic contradiction to the heartaches that bring us down and break us apart. No – Christmas is a sure sign that God has fully entered into the arena of our experience, right down to broken hearts and anxious futures. And Simeon is a reminder that heartbreak is an indispensable part of God’s own Christmas experience.

Tom Long tells of a popular engraving which depicts the infant Jesus running to his mother. The baby’s arms are outstretched. But the sun is so positioned over the baby, that a shadow of the cross is cast on the ground by his form as he runs.

Now, the message in that picture is fanciful, but true: God and humanity are bound together in Jesus, all the way from birth to death – from Christmas to cross. As Simeon reminded Mary, Christmas is proof of God's involvement in all the deaths we die, all the tears we cry, all the grief we face.

Heartbreak is an indispensable part of God’s own Christmas experience. And remembering the cross so near to Christmas takes our heartaches and puts them not on the sidelines, but at the very center of Christmas. All our brokenness is anointed and embraced by God at the manger. And even in Simeon’s ominous words, there is the promise that somehow we can make it...because the heart of God is in touch with you and me...in a God Child named Jesus.

Will Willimon tells about the annual children's Christmas pageant at one of the first churches he served. Boys and girls in the usual pillowcase and bathrobe costumes. The script called for Mary and Joseph to enter stage right, go to the apple crate that was disguised as a manger, and pick up a towel-wrapped doll who was standing in for baby Jesus. But apparently the doll got stage fright, because minutes before opening curtain there was no toy doll to be found. The main actor in this drama had somehow gone AWOL.

But not to worry - an enterprising senior high stage hand had a bright idea. He ran to a nearby Sunday School class and found a foot-tall brass cross on a table. He thought the cross beams would look like little arms when under a bath towel. So he took the cross, wrapped it all up in terry cloth, laid it in the apple crate, and cued the music.

The play began - music swells and the spotlight fades on. Enter Mary and Joseph stage right. They go to the apple crate manger, pick up the swaddling-clothed baby Jesus. Five-year old angels sing away in the manger. But then Joseph, who's looking for something to do during three verses of "Away in a Manger." decides to play peek-a-boo with toy doll baby Jesus. So he unwraps what he THINKS is the head, stares into the bundle ...can't BELIEVE his eyes, tears off the towel, holds the cross above his head and above the music yells, "OKAY, WHO PUT THE CROSS IN THE MANGER?!?!"

And Willimon says, "The only appropriate answer, of course, is that God did."

There's a cross in the middle of Christmas – old Simeon must have known that. The Fourth Wise Man of Christmas reminds us that in Jesus, God has fully entered into the arena of our experience, right down to our broken hearts and broken lives. Christmas is a reminder that God is involved in all the deaths we die, all the tears we cry, and in all the grief we face. And when Christmas breaks your heart, perhaps that is when the Christ Child can be born anew for you.

Rev. Tonya Arnesen

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