Christmas 1 December 31, 2023, John’s Christmas Pageant, John 1:1-18, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock
Growing up in Tidewater Virginia, the custom was decorating homes at Christmas with a single, lighted, electric candle in each window. The Virginia tradition goes back to colonial times when candles were necessary to light pathways to homes on dark winter nights./ From an early age, I also loved Christmas pageants. I think it is in our family’s DNA, for when our grandchildren were young, the oldest would write a Christmas pageant where all participated, delightfully costumed. I have pictures if any are interested.//
Christmas pageants are icons of God’s love. No matter how the children act, whether they remember their lines, pick up cues, or drop props,/ we are delighted, grateful, and full of compassion and encouragement to see the wonder and light in their eyes.1 I still feel the electricity in the air in this place from Christmas Eve one week ago at the packed children’s pageant. Stop for a second./ Can you feel something different around you? //
Today, we hear John’s Christmas story. It, too, is all about love, but is markedly different from Luke or Matthew. No angels, sheep, shepherds, wise men. Not even Mary or Joseph. A Christmas pageant based on John’s story has a single child holding a lone candle in front of a dark curtain, saying one line, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and the darkness did not overcome it.” That child then leads the congregation out to the hymn, I want to walk as a child as a light. The dismissal secretly concludes with, “Go in the name of Christ… to an early Christmas Eve dinner.”//
More often, we hear John’s Christmas story when children go off script in traditional pageants. My favorite is when Mary and Joseph approach the innkeeper, asking for a room. The sensitive teenager playing the innkeeper’s wife opens the door and spies the pregnant Mary, obviously in early labor pains. She throws down her script/ and shouts, “Of course,/ come on in. We have lots of room for everyone,/ especially for pregnant mothers.”/ The astonished director is forced abruptly to end the pageant and invites a surprised Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, and the compassionate innkeeper to lead haloed angels with magic wands, sheep, stuffed animals, bath-robed shepherds, drummers, and jeweled gifts along with the congregation out into the winter night singing Love Came Down at Christmas. Again,/ to an early Christmas Eve dinner.
Frederick Buechner describes another pageant at an Episcopal church.2 The manger is in front of the chancel steps. Mary wears a blue mantle, and Joseph has a cotton beard. The wise men are there with a handful of shepherds; the Christ child lies deep in the straw in the manger. The rector reads the nativity story as carols are sung at the appropriate places. All goes like clockwork until the arrival of the angels of the heavenly host, children of the congregation robed in white,/ scattered throughout the nave with their parents.
They all gather around the manger and say, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill among men.” But, there are so many angels crowding and jockeying for position/ that one of the smallest nine-year-old angels ends so far on the fringes that/ not even by craning her neck and standing on tiptoe can she see the Christ child. She has been waiting all Advent to see baby Jesus. “Glory to God in the highest,” the angels sing on cue. Then/ in the momentary pause that follows,/ the small girl electrifies the entire church by crying out in a voice shrill with irritation, frustration, and enormous sadness at having her view blocked, “Show me Jesus! Where is Jesus? I can’t see Jesus. Show him to me!”
Much pageant is still to come, but Buechner’s friend says one of the best things she ever did was ending everything precisely there. “Show me Jesus!” the child cries out again, and while the congregation sits in stunned silence, the rector intuitively pronounces the benediction. The crowd processes out of the church, singing, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing with those unforgettable words ringing in their ears. “Show me Jesus!”//
We also gather today because we, like that tiny angel, have heard John’s Christmas story of how lives have changed for over twenty centuries by the light in the darkness that now “lives among us.” We are like the Greeks later in John, who approach Phillip, saying, “We would like to see Jesus.” We long to come closer to see that light from the “word that became flesh,” but the mess in our lives and the world seems to block us from that view./
In another town, a third pageant begins.3 The second and third graders are animals making unusually realistic creature sounds. The new pageant director fails to realize the preparation time to dress/ and fix the hair/ of the heavenly host, who are thirty-two angels between ages two and four. It is a rough night in Bethlehem. Mary is sick, and the bucket near the manger is for her. Joseph may be a “righteous man, unwilling to expose Mary to public disgrace,” but he is thirteen/ and decides not to enjoy this pageant. When the mooing, barking, meowing, and baaing animals arrive behind the shepherds, all hope of heavenly peace vanishes. The animals take over the whole chancel and elevate “lowing”2 to a new cacophonous art form. The angels miss their cue and arrive long after the wise men, after the congregation sings Angels We Have Heard on High,/ and after the teenaged narrator says four times, “and suddenly there was with the angels a multitude of the heavenly host.” /But when the angels finally arrive, they look good: their halos and hair are perfect./
Right before everyone sings, Joy to the world! the narrator fights to center stage for his last line. He walks over an abundance of sheep, cows, dogs, cats, and one mouse. The angels’ parents ignore the narrator, making up for lost picture-taking time, entirely disregarding the no-flash photography request.
Mary reaches for the bucket, and Joseph has rolled his eyes so many times that they are about to fall out of his head. Our star narrator has to shout over the barnyard noise,/ and never gets the parents’ attention. /Exasperated, he throws down his folder,/ stretches out his arms,/ and yells, “Christ was born for this??”4 The exhausted pageant director cries out, “It is an exclamation point, not a question mark!”/ //
BUT, INDEED, Christ was born for this, IN ALL OUR MESS… “The word did become flesh, and lives among us.”/
Some days, the birth of Christ does feel like a question mark. Underneath the surface of our lives that look so good on the outside live hidden, secret, hemorrhaging, fractured relationships. We long to see Jesus’ love, peace, and light in our darkness. That scared inner child in each of us cries out,/ “Show me Jesus!”.//////
The child holding a single candle in John’s Christmas pageant says, “Here is the light we have been waiting for,/ the very presence of God living among us,/ inside us,/ beside us,/ and at this table.” That light of Christ miraculously enters our wounds and our messy world. The light heals us daily through neighbors,/ friends/ and this community gathered today/ if only we open our eyes and hearts to see this light already in each other, ourselves, and at this table.
God sees all of us as participants in this messy Christmas pageant we live in daily, and God dearly loves each of us, just as we love the children in last week’s pageant. God loves us no matter how well we remember our lines, sing our solos, or keep from knocking down the scenery.
In our rich and messy pageant of life, we are called to remember and keep looking for that light from that single candle/ held by a child in John’s Christmas pageant/ proclaiming that the light can always overcome our darkness. Keep looking for that light, open to all of us,/ here at this table, in ourselves, our neighbor, our children, and the stranger. Hold John’s Christmas story in your heart, where we learn that “the word became flesh”/ and now dwells among our messiness.… “Christ was born for this!”
1 Br. Curtis Almquist, Society of Saint John the Evangelist
2 Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark A Life in Sermons, (Harper Sanfrancisco 2006) p. 268.
3David Davis, “A Kingdom we can Taste,” Sermons for the Church Year. pp. 25-30.
4“Good Christian Friends,” The Hymnal 1982.107.
Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com