Christmas Eve, 1999

Parts in italics are sung

What a wonderful night this is and what a great celebration of the Incarnation of God in our own midst! Tonight I want to share part of this story through the eyes of a great American hymn writer, Edmund Hamilton Sears and through the eyes of better known characters, Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang. This juxtaposition may seem strange on this holy night, but listen and see if it works.

Edmund Hamilton Sears was an American hymn writer in the mid-nineteenth century, in a time of uncertainty and unrest in our country, a few years before the civil war. Sears, who completed his seminary degree in 1837 at Harvard Divinity School, was actually a Unitarian minister Wayland, Massachusetts and this hymn was the first of a carol-like hymn from the pen of an American poet. His hymn was characteristically American with its social message of Christmas--peace on earth and good will. The composer of the hymn tune, 'carol,' was Richard Storrs Willis, from Boston. Willis went to Germany to study with Mendelssohn when he gradated from Yale in 1841. When he returned to New York, he became editor of The Musical Times and A Musical World. He was on the vestry of the Church of the Transfiguration in NYC. This tune was written for another hymn, and was adapted for "It came upon the midnight clear in 1860." This carol has appeared in every American Episcopal Hymnal since 1874. The carol was written in a difficult time in our country and it stressed the coming of the Prince of peace and the angels' message of peace and good will. Because Sears believed in the divinity of Christ, even as a Unitarian, he was able to compose this carol that has been sung for 150 years.

Let me share some thoughts on this carol with you, by first singing part of it.

"It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old, from angels bending near the earth to touch the harps of gold:

"Peace on the earth, good will to men from heaven's all gracious king, the world in solemn stillness lay to hear the angels sing."

Christmas was about the coming of peace to a troubled time, to a country about to be at war with itself, to a people troubled about race relations and classism and equality and to some who were not troubled about those things. What would the coming of peace be like? What hope would there be for that peace? The carol says the world lay in solemn stillness to hear the angels sing.

I don't think we wait much in stillness in our own day. Unless we are away from the City and on vacation, I doubt we look up into the clear midnight and ponder much the angels' ancient song. That's where Charlie Brown comes in for me.

Like many of you Baby-boomers, I grew up with Charlie Brown. I was heartbroken last week when Charles Schulz announced the end of the strip that I have known all my life. I grew up loving the daily comic strip of these ordinary kids, having my own snoopy dolls and reading books like "happiness is a sad song, " "love is walking hand in hand," "Happiness is a warm puppy." Then later in college, I read "The Gospel according to Peanuts," and the "Parables of Peanuts;" later there were videos and I still have my own copy of "A Charlie Brown Christmas." My goddaughter gave me a Snoopy telephone when I was 30 and I still have it. Those Peanuts kids always fascinated me.

You remember that Charlie Brown and Linus often stop along the brick wall to contemplate life, they look up into the sky to ponder life's meaning. Lucy and Linus are always trying to find some deeper philosophical meaning in the clouds. One day when they were lying on a grassy knoll, looking at clouds. Lucy was seeing deep philosophical images, but Charlie Brown, looking up into the sky, said, "that cloud looks like a ducky or a cow or a sheep." Charlie Brown always saw the ordinary, instead of some great vision.

That's what our Christmas story reminds us--that even on that midnight clear, God broke into our ordinary world to become incarnate in ordinary human life. Jesus was born to an ordinary peasant girl, engaged to an older man who was a successful carpenter and could provide for her. Marriages were arranged then by families. They lived in the town of Galilee and were engaged to be married, when something out of the ordinary happened to their lives. They were still enough to hear the angel Gabriel announce to them that they would bear the son of God, that Mary would conceive a son by the Holy Spirit and Joseph would agree to be his earthly father, to raise him and teach him the values his father and mother had taught him. And so the time came for Mary to give birth in Bethlehem to fulfill the prophecies of Isaiah.

And the pitiful little Charlie Brown Christmas tree lights up and fills the snow-covered lawn with its beauty, stars sparkle in the midnight clear and all the children in the pageant are happy and filled with love. Charlie Brown says of the tree, "maybe it just needed a little love." What happens in A Charlie Brown Christmas and what happens in "It came upon the midnight clear," is that love and "HOPE" happen.

Charlie Brown is the eternal optimist and a model for us. He always hopes that Lucy will not pull the football away when he runs to kick it; he always hopes that the little red-haired girl will look at him and smile; he always hopes the baseball team will win a game and he'll pitch a no-hitter; he always hopes his kite will not get caught in the tree. Linus always hoped that this time the Great Pumpkin would visit, and Lucy always hopes that the Beethoven-playing Schroeder will notice her. Expectation and aspiration never cease, but are ever foiled. Yet the characters' faith in a better future is as characteristically American as this Christmas carol is.

That's what Christmas is about--it's about the hope that was born into the world, not only into a world of 2000 years ago, but into our own world. And as the hymn says, that hope still comes to us:

The angel's message still comes to us in our own weary world the way it came to Edmund Sears and Richard Willis in 1849. We long for peace in our time. We long for Isaiah's vision of the peaceable kingdom. We long not to fear terrorism and earthquakes and mudslides, and stock market crashes. In these days, when the millennialists would have us wait, instead for Armageddon and the end of time, the story of salvation history tells us that we wait for that peace to come instead, and like Charlie Brown, we must be eternal optimists and believe that peace will come. The third stanza reflects that hope for me:

"Yet with the woes of sin and strife the world has suffered long; beneath the heavenly hymn have rolled two thousand years of wrong; and warring humankind hears not the tidings which they bring: O hush the noise and cease your strife and hear the angels sing.

In a Charlie Brown Christmas, Charlie Brown saw hope in the little scraggly tree; he saw its limbs of evergreen as a sign of hope and said that it only needed a little love. When the world under which the angels' song was sung did not heed the tidings, when the Peanuts gang was more interested in their jazz rehearsal, when Snoopy was more interested in decorating his dog house to compete for first prize, which he won, in the house decorating contest, when the world was caught up in shopping and partying, and ignoring the angels' song, Charlie Brown believed in that ancient message. In his own fumbling way, in trying to direct the play amidst the pressures of his world, finally he stopped to hear Linus, who couldn't believe he could memorize that great passage from Luke. Linus stood alone, proclaiming the great news the angels had sung. In our war-torn world, in our world of cancer, and AIDS and estrangement, in our world of economic injustice, in our world where we strive for material gain and compete for the successes of the world even while children aground us are hungry for love, cold form lack of affection and trust, sleepless for lack of a loving human family, and homeless for that home in God for which all of us long, we hear again the good news the angels announced those 2000 years ago in Bethlehem:

The days are hastening on toward peace, not war. We wait for that great day of Peace that Isaiah foretold as much as Charlie Brown waits for friendship and love. The time is coming for peace and a time when we can all give back that proclamation of glory the angels once gave to humankind lo these 2000 years past. We know the power of the story of the coming of Christ that night in Bethlehem, we know how improbable the story was, and that may be part of its power. We can't believe that Mary was willing to be the bearer of God and that Joseph would care for this young family that was not even his. We see Jesus coming into the world in a vulnerable way as a tiny newborn in a manger in a busy crowded city on a cold night. There he is, weak and dependent on others to care for him, vulnerable to the world, unguarded, unprotected, unable to fight for himself.

That's how God comes into our world, not with power and great glory, as on that last day, but on the first day as one of us, fully human, fully vulnerable and yet fully divine. The hymn says the world awaited this coming in solemn stillness, but many were busy and caught up in the census and did not even know that behind that great hotel filled with those who had come to town, in a quiet cave, the Prince of Peace was born--born to give us hope, born to give us peace, born like one of us, and as St. John says, "the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory as of a Father's only son, full of grace and truth."

I hope this night as we sing these great carols and feel the Spirit of God in this place that we will go out into the night, which may be clear and see in the stars and listen in the wind for the angels' song. I hope when we return to our homes, that we carry with us the song that we might give it back as we care for those God has placed in our midst. Let us care for God's people, let us be about justice and peace, let us prepare for that Peace which God alone can bring us even as this century and millennium end.

Let us with Charlie Brown and his gang believe that God planned to use our hopefulness. We're always excited and hopeful when a baby is born in our midst. We hope the infant will have a great life and be healthy; we hope that one will not make the mistakes that we have made, and yet we know too, the infant is as human as we are and that each of us, whether infant or elder, needs the hope and salvation brought to us by the Christ. Christmas is our celebration of that incarnation. There is a holy hope in us that comes as a consequence of God's intervention in human life. Christmas is a time to rejoice in the faith that is in us. Along with Charlie Brown and his buddies, our faith may not be much, but that little bit of faith can grow into joy and can lead to works of faith that glorify God the way the angels did. Maybe even through Charlie Brown and us that faith might bring healing to the brokenness of the world and love to our neighbors and family. Jesus came into the world for humankind like Charlie Brown and us--frail, sinful, fearful, lacking confidence, and vulnerable.

Will we allow the baby of Bethlehem to be born in us this night? Will we--who even grieve our family losses at this time of year, who suffer from depression, who are fighting cancer, who are waiting even for babies to be born in our families, who wait for better times, who prepare for the new era in our world with the year 2000--will we allow our Charlie Brown hope to be born again? Will we claim this Jesus as our Savior? Will we allow his love to fill our lives and flow out of us to bring healing to our broken world? As the angel said, in the voice of Linus, and in the gospel of Luke, "Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. To you is born this day in the City of David, a savior, who is Christ, the Lord."

Charles Schulz will retire his pen of the cartoonist, of Charlie Brown who has been like us, of Snoopy, the eternal optimistic sidekick and Lucy and Linus and all the gang, but for those of us who grew up with them, their message of hope and their roles of being ordinary kids with all their human foibles, will live long in our memories. The reruns will continue to inspire us even in a new millennium. Let us be inspired as well, by this old, old story of angels' coming to the earth singing of God's glory. Let us give back to the world the song of joy of God's coming to be incarnate in us, and let us sing with the angels from all the years,

"When Peace shall over all the earth, its ancient splendors sing, and all the world give back the song which now the angels sing."

Amen.

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