Blame the Baby

Blame the Baby

In 1994 Christmas Eve fell on a Sunday. I was serving as interim pastor at Neshamony United Methodist Church in Hulmeville, Pennsylvania. Our family, my husband Murry and our three young children Melissa, Rebecca and Matt, attended our home church 10 miles away in Yardley, Pennsylvania. That meant a combined total of eight worship services in one day for various members of the McKenzie family. My in laws, Paul and Doris McKenzie were visiting from their home in York, Pa., some 2 hours away. We refer to it as the Guinness World’s Record Christmas- the day we dragged grandma and grandpa to as many services as humanly possible in one day.

My heart went out to them. No matter how tired you are, after several services Sunday morning, you can’t tell your grand children- “Grandma’s already been to 3 services today. I’m not coming to the service at 5:30 just because you’re in the nativity play.” You can’t tell your son “I’m not coming to the 7 pm service just because you’re singing in the men’s ensemble.” But you could tell your daughter in law, “I’m not coming to the 11 pm candlelight communion service with you at that church you are only serving temporarily and where I don’t know anyone anyway.”

Paul volunteered to stay home with the children, but Doris volunteered to come with me. I didn’t even ask her. I certainly didn’t twist her arm. Both of my in laws have been very supportive of my calling. I suspect Doris has always been a little proud (in a good way, of course!) that her son married a pastor. I was glad for the company that night. This would be the first time Neshamony UMC had ever had communion on Christmas Eve. They were used to a sermon/carols and Silent Night service, accompanied by instructions on holding a lit candle upright. I knew that an interim can do all kinds of crazy stuff and people just roll their eyes and say to themselves, “She’ll only be here for 9 months.” I figured it was worth the risk.

Now it was 11:30 pm and, as I stood behind the altar about to begin the Great Thanksgiving, looking out over the group of 50 or so people in the darkened sanctuary, there sat Doris in the middle near the back. Her father had been a Methodist minister in northern Maryland in the 1930’s and 40’s. He died of a heart attack on Christmas Eve, 1951, while he and she were sitting at the kitchen table talking and drinking cider. That may be why she didn’t really mind coming to so many services on Christmas Eve.

I only know what happened next because she told me on the drive home later. When I launched into “Lift up your hearts!” a man in front of her said to his wife in a disapproving whisper: “Whose idea was it to serve communion on Christmas Eve?”

I’m glad I didn’t hear him, because I would have been tempted to stop and answer him.

“Whose idea was it to have communion on Christmas Eve?” I’m glad you asked. There are three possible answers.

A. A personal answer: The interim woman preacher with her strange notions
B. A cultural answer: Santa- it was his idea
C. A divine answer – God

I’m going to go with A because of C. B is a ridiculous answer I just threw in because multiple choice questions need 3 choices.

It was my idea to serve the bread and cup tonight, but the original idea belonged to God. Over the years, when I have served people communion, they often say, “Thank you.” And I think-“I had nothing to do with it. I’m just the one holding the bread. It’s God you have to thank.” Theologians can argue over whether the cross was God’s plan A or plan B, whether it was God’s idea from the beginning or God’s redemptive response to tragic circumstances. That’s another sermon for another day. All I know is that it was the Son of God’s idea to go ahead toward the cross on another night years from now and years ago. Given our affirmation of the Trinity, we do not view the cross as God punishing God’s Son. It is, rather, God offering a gift from God’s own heart, God showing the lengths to which God would go to save humankind from ourselves.

We celebrate communion on Christmas Eve because tonight is the night we celebrate the identity of the baby in the manger. He is God’s own Son. It was the baby’s idea to serve communion on Christmas Eve. Don’t go blaming the interim pastor. Blame the baby.

That would have been my answer to the disapproving communion whisperer.

Perhaps fortunately, I hadn’t heard him, so I continued with the Great Thanksgiving and then came to the words of institution. I had bought a large, braided loaf of bread, an intertwining of white and rye. It gleamed in the candlelight as I held it up high and broke it with the words “This is my body.”

According to my spy in the congregation, at that precise point, the man whispered, approvingly this time:

“It looks like good bread, though.”

If I had heard him, all I would have said in response is

“Right you are, sir. It is the body of Christ, broken for us. Thanks be to God! “