Sugar Cookies

Luke 2 

             Phillip Gulley is the pastor of a church in a village named Harmony.  The name fits for the most part, but then there are times when it is a bit ironic.  Phillip has a unique path; he is the pastor of the church where he grew up.  Hence, he doesn’t need to ask the parishioners about the origins of customs and traditions; he was very much a part.

            He was there fifty years ago when Pastor Lindsey worried the children with his sermons at Christmas, that Christmas wasn’t about presents and gifts, but the birth of hope and the savior of the world.  Phillip, like all his peers, was quite concerned that parents would take such foolishness to heart and forego the presents beneath the tree.  Thankfully sermons are not always heeded.

            He also knew the tradition of the custodian to climb the bell tower at midnight and gaze over the frozen, snow covered fields before ringing in Christmas day.  This was something he enjoyed because the custodian extended the privilege of letting him climb the icy stairs with him up to the exposed artic wind so to help ring the bell.  Kids used to have so much more fun than they do in our current day of safety.

            But the most important tradition of Christmas Eve, the one he ruined, was the angel sugar cookies.  On Christmas Eve sugar cookies in the form of angels were baked in the basement of the church as the service progressed, being ready just as worship ended and the bells rang.

            Phil certainly didn’t ruin it by dissuading the women of the church to bake the cookies.  No. They were baking during the 1130 Christmas Eve service as usual; he didn’t rid the church of the aroma that drifted into the sanctuary as the congregation sang the carols and heard the second chapter of Luke.  No.  His failure was nothing so blasphemous. 

            His error was this: Pastor Phil allowed for an ad to be placed in the local paper telling folks when the service would be held on Christmas Eve, telling them all were welcome.

            The impact of the ad of course was to disrupt the perfection of the tradition.  Strangers were sitting in pews all knew to be the place of certain families and dear souls whose prayers had been offered from that spot for generations.  Folding chairs, long relegated to a closet of other unneeded items, needed to be brought out.  As a few collapsed from weight beyond their capacity, there was stirring and upset. 

            Yet, the real tragedy was still to come.  Although the angel cookies were baked, there were not enough angel cookies for each person to get a whole one fresh from the oven, still a bit soft to be held beside the glass of icy milk.  O the tragedy, the hands that needed to be rung, the alases that needed to be spoken.  People whose Christmas always began with a perfectly baked and decorated still fresh from the oven angel sugar cookie were lucky to get a wing, a gown, even, dare I say it, even just an angel’s head.  Perfection was not seen that night. 

            The events of Harmony on that disastrous Christmas Eve where the multitude of angels proved wanting, these events stay with me.  Not a Christmas goes by that I do not sit with Pastor Phil for a moment.  He gives me solace.  And I need it around this time.  For no matter how much we plan or prepare, rehearse or time the service and the singing, no matter what, at Christmas, something always goes wrong. 

            I don’t resent this.  But I must confess that I am never immune to the impact of chaos, the presence of the voice inside me that says, “well, that’s not good.”  On Christmas Eve I have had the emergency squad called into the sanctuary.  One year, somehow, no one remembered to put out all the candles for the singing of silent night.  You would think such an oversight would be impossible.  I now believe it is likely.

            Last year, testing the lesser gods, I wanted to do something exciting.  We set up a spotlight that casts the image of a star on the wall.  My hope was simple.  During the reading of the Magi, when it says, “a star appeared”, well on cue, that light would appear on the wall.  To hear a sleepy child gasp and say, “look, the star.”  What an imaginative pastor.

            The spotlight worked remotely.  I was given the control.  The control looks like a garage door opener.  You press it on and off.  I practiced quite a bit.  I was ready.  Walking to the pulpit on Christmas eve I put the control in my pocket to reserve for later.

            It was later in the service that I realized my dramatic moment would not happen.  Now mind you the control worked, and star was lit, it was just not lit on cue.  Every time I stood up or sat down, the light came on and off; sometimes it stayed on for a while only to disappear because I adjusted in my seat. 

            There is something about Christmas and perfection.  All of us at some point or in some way seek to make a perfect moment.  We look to make the right number of sugar cookies to be baked during the Christmas eve service to be offered to joyous children whose heart is filled with delight knowing a day of presents awaits.  We may simply want everyone to get along or that the turkey is cooked to perfection or just a time to be present with a kid we haven’t seen for a time.  It can be as austere as the church bell on icy steps or as simple as a canned light that should have been handled by someone more adept.  But perfection is always a quiet hope.

            Whenever I am led to seek perfection, though, I remember our reading from Luke, the shepherds in the field.  This lovely moment, tender to our ears, is so very far from perfection, perhaps about as far as one could get.  The magi, now that is a perfect moment.  But the shepherds are rough and wily and notorious liars.  So, who would be the last group you should choose to offer the hope of the world?  The shepherds.

            And where do the angels go to reveal the glory of the night?  To the religious in Jerusalem, to a crowd at the temple, to the masses at a festival so the world can be told a savior is born?  Where did the angels choose to offer the vision of not one angel, but the heavenly host, well to a band of unruly men out on top of a lonely hill just outside of a town of no consequence, where everyone was asleep. 

             Each year when I am led to attempt some moment of crafted beauty, mercy comes in the story of the shepherds, and I remember.  The joy of life comes to us when joy comes; the beauty of life is born in us not by our intents or purposes, but despite ourselves, in ways and with people far from our design or choosing. 

            This year I have not only remembered this story but found myself living it.  The plans, the intents, the traditions they seem so fragile, precarious.  The swirling events swirling leave us like shepherds in the field. 

            Sometimes I like to imagine that the shepherds were a happy mistake.  The angels where given a direction to the Sanhedrin, the religious leaders, and someone didn’t get it right and read shepherds instead.  I am sure the purposes of heaven are not as capricious as ours, yet I take a strange delight hoping the shepherds might have been a moment of indulgence, even a mistake that became a true image of hope.

            I take hope when I remember, perfection is not the absence of what is wrong; perfection is the presence of what is good.  Amid so much uncertainty and less than perfect plans, amid broken sugar cookies, I find hope that unto this day a savior is born.  The angelic host yet sing and Mary persists to cherish these memories in her heart and we too believe: there is good news of a great joy still.  Merry Christmas.  Amen.