"Late, Breaking News" - Luke 2:1-14 - December 24, 2001

It seems frequent these days that the networks interrupt our evening programming with "late, breaking, news." Most always it is bad, news of some tragedy, like the one on September 11th. They break in the middle of sports events too, which is all the more aggravating. The year 2001 has been a year for the big story, beginning with the mess over voter ballots in Florida and ending with the war in Afghanistan.

I don’t know about you but all that bad news wears me down. I’m fearful of turning on the television since that "late, breaking news" may come at any moment. When will anyone ever break in with some good news?

I stopped in a local shop recently and I asked the owner how business was. She said, "It would be a lot better if the media would quit telling everyone things are bad." In her opinion the negative news about the economy was influencing people not to make purchases. Perhaps that may be true but I believe bad news from any source may contribute to our feelings of despair and hopelessness.

Many of you have had your own share of bad news this year. Some have had health problems. Others have lost a loved one. Some have lost their job or watched their children move away from home. Many of you have less than you started with and there doesn’t seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel.

When we are constantly bombarded with hurt, pain, sorrow or disappointment we feel as though God has abandoned us. Will there ever be a brighter tomorrow? No wonder people turn to drugs or alcohol to ease their pain, its tough to cope in a world with so much distressing news. It breaks our spirits, makes us feel rejected or causes us to withdraw.

Take the shepherds for example. They were a group of folks who were extremely poor and unpopular. They stayed away from the towns and villages, making their home in remote fields, far removed from society. They were outcasts with virtually no chance of receiving good news. But these are the first people to hear the good news from an angel of God. "Behold, I bring you good news of great joy."

Imagine that. God’s message of light and love didn’t come to the elite of society, it came to the poor, the oppressed, the homeless. God has not forgotten those who believe they are abandoned or living without any self esteem. The good news has come and it has begun with them.

I think one of my life’s lowest moments came when I was in the fifth grade. I was in the annual Christmas play at the elementary school. The play was about a family who was discovering the true meaning of Christmas. At one point in the play the father of the family came home and the young son, the part that I played, was supposed to stand up, greet him and say, "Guess, what Dad, Christmas has finally come!" I was sitting next to the Christmas tree and when I stood up to say my line I accidentally knocked over the tree. It crashed to the floor, bulbs breaking and rolling off the edge of the stage. The audience roared and I instantly became mortified. People were laughing and it took every bit of energy I could muster to finish my line, tears streaming down my cheeks.

Somehow the other kids managed to compose themselves and we finished the play. The program ended but people were still laughing. I wanted to hide, to escape to some far corner of the universe. My music teacher sensed my disappointment and came over to console me. "It’s OK, Keith," she said. "You were the hit of the play. People thought it was part of the act."

That little, "late, breaking news" saved me. I no longer felt embarrassed. All of the other kids just took it in stride. They thought it was hilarious. My moment of pain had turned into a moment of glory. From that time on I was canonized as the kid who knocked over the Christmas tree at Meadow Lawn Elementary School. I thought I was a failure, but God was with me then, shining brightly through the comforting words of my music teacher.

I am reminded by a man by the name of James Pierpont who died a failure. In 1866 he came to the end of his days as a government clerk in Washington D.C. with a long string of personal defeats. Things began well enough. He graduated from Yale, which his grand father had help found, and chose education as his profession with some enthusiasm.

He was a failure at school teaching. He was too easy on his students. And so, he turned to the legal world for training. He was a failure as a Lawyer. He was too generous to his clients, and too concerned about justice to take the cases that brought good fees. The next career he took up was that of dry good merchant. He was a failure as a business man. He could not charge enough for his goods to make a profit, and was too liberal with credit. In the meantime he had been writing poetry, and though it was published, he didn’t collect enough royalties to make a living. He was a failure as a poet too.

Pierpoint decided to become a minister, went off to Harvard Divinity School, was ordained minister of the Hollis Street Church in Boston. But his position for prohibition and against slavery got him crosswise with the influential members of his congregation, and he was forced to resign. He also failed as a minister.

Politics seemed a place where he could make some difference, and he was nominated as the Abolition Party candidate for governor of Massachusetts. He lost. Undaunted, he ran for Congress under the banner of the Free Soil Party. He lost again. He was a failure as a politician.

The Civil War came along and he volunteered as a chaplain of the 22nd Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteers. Two weeks later he quit, having found the task too much of a strain on his health. He was 76 years old and couldn’t even make it as a Chaplain.

Someone found him an obscure job in the back offices of the Treasury Department in Washington, and he finished out the last five years of his life as a menial file clerk. He wasn’t very good at that either. His heart was not in it. Like the lowly shepherds, lost and detached from the rest of the world, Pierpoint remained behind the scenes the rest of his life.

James Pierpont had accomplished nothing he set out to do or be. There’s a small memorial stone marking his grave in Mount Auburn cemetery in Cambridge Massachusetts. The words in the granite read POET PREACHER PHILOSIPHER PHILANTHRIPIST.

On the other hand, some don’t agree that Pierpoint was a failure. He just stood for things that weren’t popular and lived his life, being an advocate for the underdog. He was committed to social justice, actively engaged in the great issues of his times, and he-had faith. Is it a failure to believe in the things Jesus stood for? Ironically, much of what he thought of as defeat, became a success. Education was reformed, legal processes were improved, credit laws were changed, and above all, slavery was abolished once and for all.

In one very important sense James Pierpont was not a failure. Every year, come December, we celebrate his success. We carry in our hearts and minds a life long memorial to him. It’s a song, not about Jesus or angels or even Santa Clause. It’s a terribly simple song about the simple joy of whizzing through the cold white dark of winter’s gloom in a sleigh pulled by one horse, and with the company of friends, laughing and singing all the way. One snowy afternoon in 1857, in deep winter, James Pierpont penned the words as a small gift to his family and friends and congregation, and in doing so he left a permanent gift for Christmas, the best kind, not the one under the tree, but the invisible invincible one of joy!

James Pierpont wrote Jingle Bells! To write a song that stands for the simplest joys, to write a song that three or four hundred million people around the world know, a song about something they’ve never done, but can imagine, a song that every one of us can sing the moment the cord is struck on the piano, and the cord is struck in our spirit, well, that’s not failure!

And so, my friends, I share with you tonight, a little "late, breaking, news." God is with you in your worlds of darkness. God feels your pain, God senses your heavy spirit. God knows the trials of your minds and God loves you and cares for you more than you could ever imagine. Just as God announced good news to the lousy, negative, broken down world of the shepherds God still brings good news to us. "For to you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord."

Dr. Keith Wagner, St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, Sidney, Ohio