Sermon by Rev. Russell Daye
St. Andrew's United Church, Halifax

Despite all Appearances, it is a

Christmas World

Luke 2

It is a joyous moment to be with you as the rush and colour of Christmas Eve slips into the quiet hours of the night, as the work and vigour of the year are now giving way to a few gentler days by the hearth of family and friendship. We take a few minutes for meditation to help us pass from one to the other, all the while keeping in mind that a new year looms with its need for service, struggle, and love – above all love.

Friday afternoon, I slipped out of the office to see The Nativity Story. The expanded plot had its hollywoodisms, for sure, but I was paying more attention to the setting. It has been a long time since I travelled the roads from Galilee to Jericho to Jerusalem to Bethlehem in my comfortable bus. I had forgotten how hardscrabble and burnt-over that land was – burnt over by the sun and by millennia of armies. I kept thinking, ‘what a strange womb for the birth of God.’ It seemed too barren to bear even meagre creatures, let alone the divine child. But, true to the story we are here to celebrate this evening, the divine child came.

When the lights came up in the theatre, I walked down the hall, past the banners for movies about the CIA and teenage sex and thought to myself, ‘what a strange place to come to watch the story of Christ’s birth.’ Then I walked out onto the vast parking lot in front of the Empire 17 Cinemas, looked over at the ever-reproducing box stores and generic eateries and asked myself, ‘could this setting ever be a womb for God?’ I looked over at Chapters, where Kabbalah and Kama Sutra are reduced to the truisms of self-help literature, and asked, ‘is there enough mystery left to induce God into this world?’ I looked at the rush of people and cars in and out of Sears and Zellers and Boston Pizza – two words that don’t go together in my brain – and Lee Valley and wondered, ‘is there any room here for divine love?’

But then I remembered that, only a few weeks earlier, I had found mystery at Chapters. I found it in a book about quantum physics. I had discovered that, just like theologians, particle physicists describe our world as tragic and beautiful. Sub atomic physics teaches us that a particle can spring into existence out of a vacuum! Imagine! And this happens all the time. But such a particle is most often destroyed by a parallel anti-particle created in the same instant. This image is so evocative theologically: in like manner, divine sparks spring ceaselessly into this worldly realm, seemingly from nowhere, in a dance of creation. But so many of these sparks are snuffed out by bitterness or greed or just by the hard reality of scarcity.

The good news in physics is that not all particles have been annihilated by their opposites – if they had been, we and our corner of the universe would not be here. Likewise, not all of the divine sparks in our lives are snuffed out. It is impossible to stop the dance of creation and so it goes on … even in us. God is irremovably present to our lives and is manifested as unconditional love. This is something that religion, with its great demands, so often fails to convey: you are loved. You are loved. You are loved – without condition.

God, the unconditioned presence, is ever-born in our hearts and relations as wave after wave of divine sparks. God does not come to us seeking value but rather creating value. In other words, we are not loved because we have value; we have value because we are loved. The divine sparks dance in the cells of your body, loving you. The divine sparks dance in your every connection to another, loving you. It is impossible for you to be valueless; in every nanosecond you have value because you are loved.

That God would permit herself to be drawn into this world of ours seems implausible, but the Gospel is bold enough to say it is so, and I am bold enough tonight to say that I have seen it happen.

I saw it happen this year in the elder of our two sons, Sam, who is five. I saw it in the expansion of Sam’s heart. There it was one day: agape, selfless love. He had always taken great pleasure in his little brother, Will (three) but one day I realised that Sam had developed a genuine empathy for Will’s joy and pain, not because he sought favour for being a ‘good boy,’ not because he was building himself up with the role of ‘big brother,’ but because he had begun to suffer his brother’s hurts as his own and to have his heart lifted by his brother’s joy. That was a divine spark.

I saw the sparks in a hundred moments when the eyes of St. Andrew’s folks lit up and our spirit made yet another small shift from fear to hope: when we saw all those noisy kids rushing forward at children’s time; when the earthy, front-line workers at Brunswick St. Mission said they just might like to have us around; when we ate and danced and snuck a glass of wine at the Jubilee Launch Party.

As you move to the Christmas hearth, look for the sparks. Wherever the hearth is for you – at the family table, in the quiet cottage, at Boston Pizza! – look for the sparks. They are everywhere. When the demands of the new year call to you, look still for the sparks. They are everywhere. When you see them, know two things. Know first that you are loved, without condition. Know also that you are a generator of sparks. You have become a part of the divine dancing into this world and others see sparks in you.