Sermon from Christmas 2: Thank You Laney Brown

Read John 1:1-18

A little girl touched our lives this Christmas.   The last eight days of her brief life moved us away from our materialistic Christmas selfishness and turned our attention to someone in need.  She made us feel something all to often foreign to our expression of Christmas gifts-giving---compassion, empathy, genuine love!

Her name was Delaney Brown, nicknamed Laney.  She lived in Wyomissing with her family.  Most of us never met the 8-year-old girl, but in her last 8 days of life, we came to know enough about her to fall in love, and our hearts broke for her.

My wife, among many others across the nation followed the posts by her mother, Jennifer, on the Team Laney Facebook page. Her family and friends had been there for her since she was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia in May. The attention and following spread rapidly after her mother posted the devastating news on Dec. 17 that there was nothing more the doctors at the Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital could do for Laney and that the family was taking her home.

Jennifer's written words were a heart-wrenching mixture of pain and love, a beautiful tribute to her precious child:

"Today we were told the worst news of our lives. Laney has 70% cancer cells in her blood. If they would treat the cancer the virus that she has would kill her. And if they treat the virus the cancer will kill her.  They gave her a couple days to a couple weeks to live.  My heart is breaking. I sit here looking at her face trying to remember every contour of it, I breathe deeply against her skin trying to always remember her smell. Every time she speaks I try to listen for the different way she says certain words so that I never forget. I keep putting my lips against her warm skin because I never want to forget how that feels. I'm devastated and I'm hoping that I will wake up from this nightmare.  We told Laney and she said she wanted to be the one to tell Kylee and Jacob. She told Jacob that when she's gone he is to be a good big brother to Kylee. And she thanked Kylee for being a great sister and her best friend. They all cried in each other's arms. I have never felt this type of pain in my life.  We will be taking her home on hospice tomorrow and will be trying to let her have as much fun as she can handle. We will watch her blow out her eighth birthday candles knowing that she won't have a ninth. We will also ask Santa to come early this year because Laney has been such a good girl. Please pray for Laney and our family. Please pray for a miracle. We will be spending every second with her till God decides he needs another beautiful angel up in heaven."

What do you do when the darkness comes?  I'm not talking about the small stuff, like the troublesome relationship that needs healing, or the mistake you made last week.  I'm talking about the real heavy stuff...the darkness of your own child dying...on Christmas Day!   What words can lighten this darkness?  What can you do to let the light back in to such a dark time?

This family focused on filling Laney's remaining days

with special moments. They turned their attention to Laney's bucket list. She wanted carolers at her home. She wanted to meet Taylor Swift, who is also a Wyomissing local.  Taylor contacted Laney by video conference on Dec. 20, Laney's eighth birthday.   The next day, about 10,000 carolers gathered outside her home in West Reading.  

Laney died at 3:10am on Christmas morning.

After the Christmas morning gifts were opened, and my 7 year old bounced off the walls with joy at the sight of what Santa brought, my wife read the sad news posted on Facebook by her mother.  She and I said a prayer, and we thanked God for the blessings we have.   Then, I asked myself, "Does the Christmas story have enough light to shine through the darkness this family on the other side of town was experiencing at that moment?"  I desperately wanted to say that it did.  But, to be honest, I came to the confession that it didn't.  The Christmas story alone simply does not have the light that can cut through darkness such as this.  I looked at my son, having so much fun on Christmas morning a little differently.  I knew as I looked at him, that if a disease or some catastrophe had taken him from me that morning, the message of baby Jesus born in a manger simply does not have the power to brighten that darkness.

But, the Easter story...IT DOES!  

It is Jesus' death on the cross that connects us to a Father who knows what its like to lose a child to undeserved suffering.  It's the empty tomb that promises us that God refuses to let the darkness of death have the last word.  Christmas may warm our souls with hope, but when the darkness comes we need Easter!

This family in Wyomissing needed Easter on Christmas morning---Christmas alone is simply not enough!

Each year we elevate the holiday of Christmas so high that, I think, we assume the Biblical story behind it must have the same elevated power and authority to save us as well.  But, it doesn't.  It was never meant to.  Easter is our primary story. It's Easter that has the power to shine a light that the darkness can not overcome.   

In the end, Laney and her mother, did more to bear witness to the gospel than many of us do in our entire lifetime.  Like John, in today's gospel message, who was not the light but came to testify to the light.  Laney's story testified to the light, and showed us how we can too.  

For a brief moment---during our celebrations of Christmas---she and her mother made us stop and think about how fortunate each of us is. How truly blessed we all are.  How each person matters to God and how truly precious each moment of life is.  She made me remember what Christmas is truly about: God fulfilling a promise to us to send the light of life into the world--a light that no darkness can overcome.  Christmas is just the beginning....and Easter is the rest of the story.

For these things I am grateful to her this Christmas.

What does this message mean to us at the beginning of this new year?

Will we fall into our usual ways of taking life for granted and relying on selfish materialism to fill our empty souls?  Or, will we begin to live into the promises given at our Baptisms, and treat this gift of life as precious and every person as someone who matters to God?

That decision is what is left for us to determine.

But, just as the Christmas message was foretold by Isaiah where he wrote, "And a little child will lead them..."  so it is with us in a very real sense of it this year.   Out of our materialism, out of our selfishness, a little child has led us to the gospel where we are compelled with compassion and empathy for someone we never met.  

May this message help to inspire us to make better choices with our lives in 2014.

Amen.

A Mary Christmas

Ask any parent about the birth of their child and they will typically light up with joy to tell you the story. I have heard many of these stories. Some are told with the drama of close calls, and heroic efforts. Others are told with a preface, "Things were different back then..." Still others are told with a flare of serendipity. While all of these stories are uniquely special, they all have a couple of things in common as well. First, they are all thought of with a sense of miraculous wonder. Second, they are all remembered and retold with vivid detail. And third, the mother's emotions are always a roller coaster of highs and lows, fear faith—always ending in Joy!

There's one particular mother whose birth story I would love to hear her tell...Mary, the mother of our Lord, Jesus.

We can only imagine her story... But, imagination is a big part of the Christmas experience. The Christmas story is quite essentially a birth story.

From Luke's gospel we can use a little imagination and Mary’s story emerges.

First of all, just like any other birth story--Luke retells the birth of Jesus with a sense of miraculous wonder. An angel visits Mary to announce to her that she will conceive and bear a son, and he will be the Son of God, the long awaited Messiah.

Second, and also just like other birth stories, the birth of Jesus is told with vivid detail. We hear about the politics of the day, the details of the journey to Bethlehem, the crowded scene when they got there, the difficulty that Mary and Joseph had finding a place to stay, and how one innkeeper offered them his stable. Mary delivers the baby, and we are told even more details. The baby is wrapped in swaddling cloths, and they laid him in a manger. With great detail Luke tells of the birth of Jesus, just like any other birth story, and we can imagine Mary sitting with us over a cup of coffee while she tells it to us exactly the same way, with every detail.

The only thing missing from Scripture's telling of the story is the third thing that all birth stories have in common--the roller coaster of emotions---the highs and lows—the fear and faith. This is left wholly to our imagination. But, you know...Sometimes the best things we have to say are said best when we say nothing at all. Mary's emotions, how she was experiencing that night of Jesus' birth, may have been said best by the Scriptures saying nothing at all. This gives us the opportunity to put ourselves in her shoes, and relive it with her. And, it also gives Mary the opportunity to identify with all of us---not just mothers, but fathers as well.

So, let us stretch the Scripture just enough to read between the lines and imagine for a moment what Mary might have been going through that night. She was a young girl, full-term pregnant, in a foreign town surrounded by strangers--all except Joseph and the donkey that carried her. She was about to give birth in a stable, where the stench in the air, the mess all around. Let's imagine for a moment...what Mary, the girl who was about to bear the Son of God into the world was feeling?

I imagine it something like this...

[Megan Pyle sings Breath of Heaven (Mary's Song) by Amy Grant]

This song gets us into the story of Mary in a way that is very real for all of us. A girl whose life hangs in the balance between God’s plan for all of us and her own plan for herself. Mary's story is an inspiration for all of us. In the stillness of that very first Silent Night, it is no stretch of the imagination to think of Mary teetering in that place between fear and faith—that place we all know very well. And in that moment, she was faithful.

You might say the first Christmas miracle wasn't the child born to Mary, but that Mary was willing and remained faithful to God.

And so it is with us.

When our lives hang in that balance between God's plan for us and our plan for ourselves, we can remember Mary and her inspiring story.

Mary's Christmas miracle is for us as well.

We can remain faithful.
We can trust in God, because of the Breath of Heaven

Prayer
Breath of heaven, hold us together. Be forever with us. Amen!