Worth - Christmas Eve

December 24, 2016    Christmas Eve                         Luke 2:1-20

            As I was graduating from Gettysburg Seminary in 1999 I was given the paperwork for this church.  When people familiar with upstate New York found out about it they said, “Lucky you.  They have Wegmans up there.”  My thought was, “What’s a Wegmans?” as if was a breed of dog or a type of wine.  “Oh, you just wait.  It’s the best store ever!” they said.  And off people would go raving about Wegmans.  I came to this area with high hopes for this magical place called a “Wegmans.”

            Of course Wegmans doesn’t disappoint.  They truly are an amazing grocery store chain.  I’m impressed that when I’m in the bakery section it feels like a bakery.  When I’m in the seafood section I feel like I’m in a fish market.  Produce is good.  Prices are right.  No one can complain that they put things like milk right by the door so I don’t have to walk half a mile to the back of the store where other stores put it.  Everything you want Wegmans has.  Wegmans prices are often very good, even competitive with discount grocers.  And they pay close attention to detail, right down to the grammatically correct signs at the express lines which say, “Ten items or fewer.”  Rather than, “Ten items or less.”

            One thing I notice whenever I go into a Wegmans is that I like who I am when I’m there.  I’ve talked to some of the people in Wegmans marketing department and they say they are very deliberate about that.  They want customers to feel good about who they are.  They are respected, worthwhile, and good.  Contrast that with say Aldi, where despite the fact that you may feel good that you’re saving a lot of money by shopping there, you can’t get away from feeling like a cow going down the chute in a slaughterhouse.

            Now Wegmans is not the first store to do this, and much as people around here love Wegmans, I can think of other stores that do it better.  Arguably the all-time best was Wanamaker’s, the department store chain.  If you were a child growing up in Philadelphia or New York City in the first half of the twentieth century you know what I am talking about.  While Wanamakers had a number of stores, nothing could rival the one in downtown Philadelphia and the three in New York.  I believe all the New York stores are gone, but the Philadelphia store is still open and operated by Macys. 

I had a friend in seminary, Louise Reynolds, who grew up poor in Philadelphia and remembers going to Wanamakers.  She said it was always spectacular.  Wanamakers employees were always taught to treat every customer with dignity and respect.  And everyone was always welcome there whether they were rich or poor, clean or dirty, whether they were there to buy something or not.  If you’ve ever been to the Philadelphia store you know that it is palatial.  It is built around the Grand Court which is a room so big it can hold over 10,000 people.  The ceiling of the ornate room is around 140 feet high.  The centerpiece of the room is a two-and-half-ton bronze eagle cast for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.   Say to any Philadelphian, “Meet me at the eagle,” and they know exactly where you mean. 

Wanamakers did not pipe in music for its customers to listen to while they shopped.  No, in the Grand Court is another item from the St. Louis World’s Fair, the largest pipe organ ever built.  Customers heard live music every day from some of the world’s top musicians.  No matter how bad your day was going or who you were, no matter how ugly the world was outside you could go into Wanamakers and be in a warm beautiful place with wonderful sounds and smells.

Louise especially remembered going to Wanamakers at Christmas.  She said there was a tiny train kids could ride on for free in the vast toy department.  And she remembered most fondly singing Christmas carols.  She said it felt like all of Philadelphia would turn out and cram into the Grand Court.  Thousands and thousands of people would gather and the store would hire some world famous organist and everyone of all races: rich and poor, famous and unknown, clean and dirty, virtuous or sinful would all sing together.  And you felt like you were somebody.  You felt good about yourself.  You felt like you were worthwhile; whoever you were.  That’s what Wanamaker’s wanted its customers to feel; worthwhile.

Let’s go one better in terms of making people feel worthwhile.  We’ll have to leave wonderful smells and sounds and beauty behind and step into the truly profound.  We find ourselves in a small, crude, smelly stable in Bethlehem.  There a person’s worth does not come from the surroundings, but by what happened.  In fact if the surroundings were fancy the events themselves would be ruined, for it is because it is crude that it is profound.  God comes go be in human form.  Jesus is born.

We read in Psalm 8 earlier, “Your glory reaches beyond the stars… What is humankind that you remember them, the human race that you care for them?  You treat them like gods, dressing them in glory and splendor.  You give them charge of the earth, laying all at their feet…”

Later by candlelight we’ll read the great opening words from John’s gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”

Don’t hear those words as if they were trying to be a scientific thesis, for they are not.  They are an existential statement.

Look around you and consider.  The world appears to be a big place.  We can look at our human inventions and our powers of science and building and weapons and machinery; and all of it is insignificant in light of the size of the solar system, let alone the size of the universe.  When you consider that an ordinary solar flare from the sun delivers over 300 million times more energy than all the explosives detonated in World War 2 combined, and then you consider we’re tiny beings on a little planet around an ordinary star at the edge of a galaxy… what are human beings that you are mindful of them God?  What is their worth that you even notice them?

We are so small.  We are so insignificant.  We’d be incredibly bold and arrogant to think that God would even notice our existence in the vastness of it all.  But God does more than notice.  God becomes one of us.

There is nothing more flattering to our existence than having God become like us.  There is no more profound way to say you are worthwhile than what God has done.

Wegmans and Wanamakers make everyone welcome and feel worthwhile.  Our gospel reading lists the rich and powerful: Emperor Augustus and Governor Quirinius.  It lists ordinary people: Joseph and Mary.  It brings in shepherds, the bottom of the barrel humans in those days.  All are welcome.  All are joined in Jesus’ birth.  All are worthwhile because of him.

You shouldn’t have to go somewhere to feel worthwhile.  God is with you always.  That is God’s eternal gift to you.

If nothing else, I hope this is a space where you always feel worthwhile.  But my bigger hope is that you can see that because of Christ’s birth God has shown that he considers every person worthwhile.  And that you can go from here seeing that worth in every other person’s face.  Maybe you like them.  Maybe you don’t.  Maybe you agree with them and maybe you don’t.  Maybe you respect them and maybe you don’t even respect them.  But they are worthwhile enough for God to come to be born and later to die to have them.  It is not yours to determine who is or is not worthy.  That is God’s.  Our job is that when they are around us they feel like they are somebody and that they are worthwhile.

Worth, dignity, respect – the greatest gifts we can give another person.  It is what God has given us.