First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Luke 2: 21-35
While I am far from young, let the record show that I am not so old so as to have fought in any of the wars my elders call “The Big Ones”….namely, World Wars I and II, and that regional skirmish (nearly a century-and-a-half back) known as the Civil War. I am not even a great student of the Civil War, although I have walked the battlefields at Gettysburg, Harper’s Ferry and Antietam.
But Bruce Catton knew the Civil War and, in marvelous books like Stillness at Appomattox, wrote so vividly that one could read about it in one’s armchair and (yet) be there at the same time. Some day I shall take the time to read those books and refight that war. But that time is not now.
Truth be told, I have read only one of Bruce Catton’s books all the way through and that book had little, if anything, to do with armed conflict. What it had to do with was growing up….his growing up….in Benzie County in northern Michigan. Bruce’s father started a private school, Benzonia Academy, early in the twentieth century. Benzonia, the town, sat on top of a hill. Beulah, its sister town, sat at the bottom of the hill. Kissing up to the edges of Beulah was Crystal Lake, which (if you swam the length of it, east to west) would take you eight miles to Frankfort. Still will, for that matter. And there are those who say there is no more beautiful body of water in Michigan than Crystal Lake. I don’t know about that. I don’t want to start a fight with the Walloon people. But what I do know is that, in size and shape, there is no lake anywhere that more closely resembles the Sea of Galilee than Crystal Lake. Which, as information goes, might be worth something to you in the event that you never make it to the Middle East.
My purpose in placing you at Crystal Lake is because that is where Bruce Catton’s two stories take place….the two stories I am going to tell you this morning….after which I shall append a comment or two and sit down. If that sounds like a lazy way to go on my part, at least listen to the stories before rendering judgment. Ready or not, here we go.
Story Number One
It concerns the morning that Lewis Stoneman and I went sailing on skates. I do not know whether anyone does that nowadays, but it was quite the thing at the time and we had read about it in some magazine. You took thin strips of wood and made an oblong frame about four feet long and three feet wide and added an old, discarded bed sheet, cut to size and tacked to the frame. Then you put on your skates, held the frame out in front of you, and let the wind take charge.
So one day, frames erected, we went down to Crystal Lake which, as luck would have it, was as clear and smooth as a pane of glass. Skating conditions were perfect. The sun was bright. The bare ice was as polished steel and there was a brisk wind to the east. The wind soon filled our sails and took us down the lake from east to west at what seemed like a fabulous speed. We had never moved so fast on skates before. In fact, we had not even imagined that it was possible to move so fast. And it was all so completely effortless. It was like being a hawk, soaring above the ridge on a great updraft of air.
Neither of us knew anything about sailing. To tack or even to go on a broad reach was entirely foreign to us. We simply had to go where the wind went. And, if I had thought about it, the realization that I would have to walk back into the face of it would have sobered me a bit. But there would be time to worry about that later.
For the moment, it seemed as if the whole world had been made for our enjoyment. The hills that rimmed the lake were white with snow, cut in places by bare tree trunks standing like sentinels observing our passing….while the sun beat down as a friendly weight upon our shoulders. Save for the creasing of our blades upon the ice, there was hardly a sound anywhere. I do not believe that I have ever felt so completely in tune with the universe than I felt that morning on Crystal Lake. It was friendly. And all of its secrets were good.
Then, suddenly, came the awakening. We had ridden the wind for about six miles or so and were within two miles of the western end of the lake. When we realized that not far ahead of us was a broad stretch of sparkling, dazzling blue….running from shore to shore, flecked with picturesque whitecaps. Open water….beautiful, but carrying with it the threat of sudden death. The lake was not entirely frozen after all, and we would reach its open end in no time. The lake was a good 100 feet deep there, and the temperature of the water scarcely one degree warmer than the ice itself.
Suddenly we looked down. There was also a change in the ice beneath us. It was transparent…. and the water below was as black as a starless midnight. Moreover, it was now sagging under our weight, giving out ominous creaking and cracking sounds. We dropped our sails and made a grotesque race for safety….half skating….half running….until we clumsily reached the beach and collapsed on a log to catch our breath.
Yet the whole business cut a hard groove in my mind. I found I did not want to talk about it. I did not even want to think about it. For what I had seen through the transparent, bending ice seemed to be nothing less than the heart of darkness. It was not just my own death that lie down there….it was the ultimate horror lying below all life….a horror held at bay by something so fragile it could break at any moment.
Although it does not happen the same way to every kid….or at the same age to every kid….no one makes it all the way through high school without some experience where, after surviving it, one is led to say: “Whew, that was a close one.” Which means “I could have died there.…been badly hurt there….been crippled or maimed there….been caught and arrested there….or gotten myself in a lot of trouble and lost a whole big chunk of my future there.” Life is full of near misses. More than once, you and I have skated on some very thin ice.
But I promised you a second story. Same kid. Same town. Same December. So here it is.
Story Number Two
Shortly after the experience on the lake came Christmas. By the time I was 16, the old excitement of Christmas gifts had, of course, worn thin. And I was about ready to admit that the intense emotion centering about the tree in the living room was primarily for small children (whose ranks I was certain I had left). Yet, in some ways, Christmas that year had an impact it had never had before. It seemed to come out of what I had always considered a routine observance….the Christmas Eve service in our little village church.
Every year in the week before Christmas, the tallest balsam which could be cut and gotten into the church was erected on the raised platform where the choir ordinarily sat, and it was covered with homemade decorations….looped chains out of colored paper….white popcorn threaded on long strings….silver stars….and metal clips holding lighted candles. We had no electric lights in those days. And the fire hazard represented by open candle flame must have been enormous. But nothing ever seemed to happen.
Anyway, the church was filled with people, and just to be in it on Christmas Eve seemed as to be partaking in a mystery. The service was extremely simple. There were carols….prayers, I suspect….the reading of the Gospel story….a few quiet remarks by the minister….the distribution of candy canes and popcorn balls to the youngest children….and a final hymn.
And when the wheezy organ, pumped vigorously by a sweating young man behind the pulpit screen, gave forth with “Joy to the World,” and the doors swung open to let us out into the winter night, it was as if we heard the sound of far-off trumpets.
Walking home afterward….the frozen snow creaking under our boots….and the silent air still echoing the carols we had sung….there seemed to be an endless host of stars whose clear flames denied the darkness. The message was unmistakable. Life was leading us somewhere… somehow….miraculously….to a transfiguration.
It stayed with me. I felt that I had caught a glimpse behind the veil. I had seen the ultimate truth. And the truth was good (or so it seemed to me at the time).
And then I remembered that, under the ice on my wind-driven cruise across Crystal Lake, I had seen something entirely different. For under that ice lay an outright denial of everything I had seen in the stars on Christmas Eve. In the space of but a few days, I had seen two visions….one of horror….and one of transfiguration….and they seemed equally authentic. They spoke with equal force. And I could not accept one and discard the other.
* * * * *
Nearly every one of you I have talked to….along with all you Christmas letter writers out there….have told me the same four things.
1. That this Christmas is different.
2. That this Christmas is more painful and perilous than those previous.
3. That this Christmas is also more precious than those previous.
4. And that the song is right….that we “need a little Christmas, right this very minute”….even though some of you went so far as to replace “a little” with “a lot.”
I don’t need to belabor the point. Bruce Catton’s stories have already made it. Life is not without its horror….or its glory.
Eight days after Jesus was born, they brought him into the Temple for three very ancient and very Jewish ceremonies. The first….circumcision. The second….the redemption of the first born. The third….the purification of Mary. All of which are interesting. But they do not concern me here. What concerns me is this old man….this very old man….this one Luke calls Simeon, who is hanging around the Temple on the day Jesus is brought to it.
As you know, every Jew waited for a Messiah. And most Jews waited with expectations that included political dominance and military might. The argument went as follows: The Messiah will come over and we will overcome….anybody and everybody….those who got in our way once…. those who get in our way now…..and those who could ever conceivably get in our way in the future.
But not everybody waited thusly. There were some who were known as “the quiet in the land,” who had no thoughts of violence and no dreams of power. By contrast, they practiced a life of gentle watchfulness and constant prayer against the day of God’s coming. Simeon was one of “the quiet in the land.”
Upon seeing the baby, he breathed a sigh of relief….smiled a very deep smile….and then said (prayerfully) to God: “Thanks for the vision. Having seen it….having seen him….I can die now.” But before he did, he said to Mary: “This is only the beginning. Because of your baby, some will rise…some will fall….and before this mothering business of yours is finished, your heart will be broken.”
Which it was, of course. As will all of ours….be broken, I mean (at some time or another). But, as Simeon suggests, we can bear the worst because we have seen the best.
It could not have been much lovelier than it was here on Christmas Eve. Then, about 2:45 p.m. on Christmas day, something in me said: “Ritter, you’ve got a few minutes. Go over to Beaumont and see Pat Work.” Which I did. And, upon walking into her room, found her dead. It had just happened a couple of minutes earlier. Although it was hardly a surprise.
We shall remember her at 2:00 this afternoon. At which time I shall respond to someone’s suggestion that the death of a loved one on December 25 could (conceivably) spoil Christmas forever. To which I will say:
No, you mustn’t look at Christmas through what has happened.
You must look at what has happened through Christmas.
Note: Bruce Catton’s boyhood memoirs were published under the title Waiting for the Morning Train and, to my knowledge, are still very much in circulation. The wonderful quote that closes the sermon was passed along to me by Carl Price. And it is Carl’s recollection that he heard it from our former ecclesiastic leader, Bishop Dwight Loder
